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Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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Writers in This Issue: Mike Fredericks Tracy Ford
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Phil Hore
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Charles R Knight
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Alexander Wronko
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PT Interview: Richard Milner on Charles Knight . . . . . . . .Fredericks. . . . 10 Corythosaurus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 How to Draw Dinosaurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Dinosaur Collector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Knol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Collectors Corner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fredericks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 The Noble Lizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . McFarland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 The Crate Lake Monster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kotz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
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What’s New in Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fredericks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
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Texas Assassin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DeMarco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
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Dino Expo Tokyo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Top Ten Movie Dino Fights . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Berry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58
Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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#2 Jurassi c Park
FROM THE EDITOR
#5 One Mi l l i on
Years B. C. Set your cell phones to Dino mode. It’s time for another issue of Prehistoric Times magazine! In our last issue, you’ll remember we featured an article about the Sci-fi TV drama 'Terra Nova' written by Mark Berry. Well, you probably heard that the show was axed after its first season. Perhaps another network will pick it up still (and hopefully add some more dinosaurs.) I hope Prehistoric Times isn’t one of those magazines that places a curse on any TV show it mentions, thereby causing it to soon be cancelled, but just in case it Top Movi e is, I’d like to mention Jersey Shore, Di nosaur Fi ghts Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and all of the Real Housewives shows. Our front cover art is a closeup of a famous painting by Charles R. Knight (shown in its entirety below) and our featured interview in this issue is with Richard Milner, author of the amazing new book, “Charles R. Knight - The Artist Who Saw Through Time.” I Thank Abrams, the book’s publisher, Rhoda Knight Kalt, the granddaughter of Charles Knight and of course, Richard. I know you will enjoy it and I highly recommend you pick up a copy #9 Journey to the Begi nni ng of Ti me of the book, which is a fantastic read and fully illustrated. your support. Don’t bother sending payment to any internet Our regular writer Allen Debus #7 Prehi stori c Beast companies offering subscriptions for less than $30 either as begged me to let him have a vacation they will not be honored by us here and you will receive no from this issue as he is working on a second edition of his book on sculpt- magazines. Thank you. ing dinosaurs with Bob Morales, but, slave driver that I am, I cracked the MOVING?? PLEASE let us know your new address the second you plan whip and forced him back to his desk. He to move. The magazine is NOT forwarded and it costs us to resend the magwas very kind to come up with a Charles azine a second time to your new “digs.” Thanks so much. Knight related article about Agathaumus. A ARTISTS! PT does not pay for submissions but many artists whose work while back Mark Berry wrote a popular artiis seen in Prehistoric Times get paying work from other sources. Please cle for PT listing the all time ten best send jpg files of your artwork scanned at 300 DPI resolution. Send as an dinosaur movies. Recently at the PT approx 4” jpg with your name in the title of the image--example-Facebook page, I asked the faithful there to Triceratops by John Smith.jpg to our e-mail address or send good copies come up with the best dinosaur fight (that you don’t need returned and that aren’t too big to fit our 9 x 12 scanscene in a movie and I got a great We were sad to hear that ner bed) to our mailing address in California. We need your art and info. artist Dan Varner response. I thought it would make an excelThank you! For #102 Giganotosaurus & Oreodonts (June 10, 2012) #103 lent second article for Mark to write. He recently passed away. Amargasaurus & Repenomanus (Sep 10, 2012) #104 Troodon & prehistoric agreed and we offer it here, the “Top Ten whales (Dec 10, 2012) #105 (20 year anniversary issue)Triceratops and Movie Dinosaur Fights.” I show scenes (provided by Mark Berry) from four Dire Wolf (Mar 10, 2013). of the ten as a teaser on this page. (If you miss seeing any King Kong scenes in the top ten, that’s because King Kong isn’t a dinosaur.) Speaking of Kong, Brian Blacknick has created an amazing model of the lost spider pit scene from the original King Kong film. The story goes that the scene was cut from the film as it was believed that 1932 audiences couldn’t handle its horPut any of six dinosaur designs on ror, and then the footage was lost. Peter Jackson created his own great version of the scene for his more recent King Kong film. I think Brian has done your chest, or head or mug, or..... a great job here too. Also, our roving reporter from Hong Kong, KK Chan has penned an accounting of the recent Dino Expo from Japan for you that I would have loved to attend. We also include great articles from our usual gang, Phil Hore, Tracy Ford, Randy Knol, Steve DeMarco, Sean Kotz, Paul Six des T. re x igns! McFarland, Anthony Beeson and more so please lean back in your man , Spi n o , De i cave, kick up your feet onto the nearest rock and enjoy. n o ny ch Steg o us , Tri Thanks too, to Carl Masthay for some editing in this issue, plus both Neil & B ra c e r, chi o ! Trais, and Juan Carlos Alonso for some of the graphic work in the issue. When it is time to renew your PT subscription, PLEASE renew directly through us either through Paypal at www.prehistorictimes.com or by mailing your payment to our California address. If you renew your subscription with an internet subscription company or ANYONE ELSE, we are receiving only pennies on your dollar and PT is a small business that depends on
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© Frederik Spindler www.frederik-spindler.de/news-infos.html
ME S O Z O I C
MAIL © John Trotter www.paintmonkeystudios.com
Mike, this latest issue #100 is nothing short of "prehistoric heaven": from cover to cover!!! Everything in it is totally on the money and as interesting as it can possibly get. I just got it in the mail today and have not put it down except to write and give kudos to you and everyone else that had a part in making this issue so special! Congratulations and I hope another hundred issues are in the future. It sure has been a productive year and a half with all the new species of dinosaurs being discovered. I am so glad P. T. shines the forever burning light on all these wonderful finds. Regards, Richard Mirissis, Staten Island, NY Dear Mike, I was watching an episode of the History Channel's ‘Saur Spot Jurassic Fight Club called T-rex vs by Tom Moore Raptors and it stated that they have found evidence that raptors used hand signals in order to coordinate attacks. After they stated that, they had a paleo expert "Dinosaur George" Blasing say that they did have complex brain structures. He doesn't say what evidence there is to support what the History Channel says. I have searched and searched countless articles and knowledgeable websights looking for ‘Saur Spot what the evidence was. It sounds very interesting and sheds light on how truly intelligent these creatures were. Do you know a websight or book that would have mentioned that? By the way, I really liked the 100th issue cover! Very classy! CE, Haleyville, AL Always nice to hear from you Carla. That sounds like something we might see in the next Jurassic Park film, eh? A. Anytime you hear someone talking about dinosaur behavior, you really need to take it with a grain of salt. I’m a big fan of CG dinosaurs on TV but the creators of these shows have to use a lot of artistic license to try to make them interesting. With little more than fossils and trackways to go by, it is near impossible for us to know a lot about this aspect of the dinosaurs. Scientists are a lot smarter than I am but if you think about it, what 6
possible evidence for hand signs could they have gotten from these two sources. B. My other thought is (after doing a lot of reading and talking to paleontologists) that the dromaeosaurs may have been the most intelligent OF THE DINOSAURS, but still a far cry from having the intelligence of most mammals and I'm not so sure that even apes use much in the way of hand signals. C. And lastly, I just looked all over the internet and did not find anything about this, plus I have about a half dozen loyal readers that ALWAYS send me the latest dinosaur news when it appears on-line and I have heard nothing about this from them. If you find something, please forward it to me. Maybe someone reading this knows some more? - editor
Hello Again Mike, Congratulations on your century mark magazine, well done! Prehistoric Times is one great magazine and your article on Peter Schouten was outstanding. His artwork is nothing short of spectacular - the vivid colors of his birds - fantastic. The eyes of his Saurornithoides mongoliensis actually seem to look back at you. He shows beautiful attention to detail - I can’t wait to buy his book. Mike, you have given us dino lovers (young and old) a great magazine. Thank you for letting my letters and artwork be a part of it. Mike Landry, Newburgh, NY by Tom Moore
Hi Mike! Congratulations on your 100th issue. Not too many magazines have made it that far and almost none can claim ever improving quality. Thanks for the joy, knowledge, excitement and fun you have brought to dinosaur enthusiasts all over the world. Gratefully, Larry Tribula, Sandusky, MI Hi Mike, Congratulations on your recent 100th issue! That’s fantastic news and I hope the readers can look forward to the 200th issue! My PT collection starts with issue 20! Recently my 9 year old son, Peter, after seeing Leelan Lampkins’ prehistoric ocean diorama on PT’s Facebook page (a plug?), had to make a shoebox diorama of an environment for school. He decided to do “The Ocean”, but not only did he do the ocean, but with his love of dinosaurs, it had to be a prehistoric ocean. Attached is an image of Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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his prehistoric ocean. The main character is an Orthocone (he fell in love with that after seeing Nigel Marvin’s ‘Chased by Sea Monsters’ video. It also closely resembles L e e l a n ’s orthceras. Also in his ocean are a few trilobites, a brittle star, some horn coral and other corals in the back. Construction paper doubled as sea weed in the far rear. It’s finished off with real beach sand. The best part is, except for the baking of the Sculpey, he did this all himself. Dad just supplied some of the how-to inspiration. Regards, Kevin Kilkenny, Staten Island, NY Peter Kilkenny’s prehistoric ocean school project
Andrew Miller Age 10
Kretaceous Kids Korner
Nathaniel Leahy Age 10 Izaiah Burgos Age 10
Connor Ross Age 13.
Dear Mike, Issue #100! Did you see that coming back in ‘93? Sometimes I forget just how far PT has come over the years. I don’t see how you do it, but I’m grateful that you do. I hope there are many more issues ahead and that you enjoy doing each and every one like I enjoy reading them. Yours, Neal Welsh, Norristown, Pa.
Paul F Machabee Age 13
Brush with Death By Rudy Hummel
Alexander Wronko Age 4
Illustrated by Michael Kelly Arthur Machabee Age 15
Hesperornis dives deep To find the place where fishes sleep Searching sea for tasty meal Among the water tinged with teal Spins around, left to right
She puts on a burst
As deeper flies the downward flight
To reach safety first
Shape in the distance catches eye
Her feet feel like lead
Ancient shadow drawing nye
But she edges ahead
Tylosaurus is ravenous too Hesperornis he wants to chew Cretaceous bird turns her tail
Michael Kelly’s art (age 14) to go with Rudy Hummel’s poem (age 15) (Left)
Droplets are scattered Surface is shattered Sharpened teeth gnash
Leaving behind a bubble trail
Glittering scales thrash
Toward the waves she races
Hesperornis bobs on a log
But death soon she faces
Rocking wildly in the fog
Her strength waning
Tylosaurus circles ‘round
Pursuer gaining
Then retreats without a sound
Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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The PT DinoStore
Vintage dinosaur collectibles for sale from PT magazine “Dinosaur Collectibles” price guide co-written and signed by PT editor $49 Linde 1950s Coffee Premium plastic dinosaur figs 7 from Austria. @$10 Rare 8th Linde dinosaur to complete above set: Rare Rhamphorhynchus $49 Marx orig. sm/med 50s/ 60s dinosaur toy figs (green, brown, gray) $5 Marx orig. Krono, T-rex (pot-belly or slender) $30, Brontosaurus $20 Marx original second series dinos/mammals $12 each, set of 8 - $79 Marx 45mm cavemen (6 diff) $7 ea Marx 6” cavemen (6 diff) $12 ea. Multiple (MPC) dinosaur plastic figures many colors $4-8 each (inquire) J H Miller waxy plastic nice Prehistoric cave toy $49 or prehistoric woman $24 J H Miller waxy plastic1950s Dimetrodon, broken feet -stands fine $49 Dimestore dinos J H Miller waxy plastic1950s Stegosaurus, short tail $59 Sinclair banks J H Miller waxy plastic1950s Woolly Rhino $69 J H Miller waxy plastic1950s Mammoth /Mastodon short tusk $59 J H Miller waxy plastic1950s Triceratops short horn $69 JH Miller cave Sinclair 1960s hardback book “Exciting World of Dinosaurs” $49 Sinclair hollow dinosaurs 1964 NY World’s Fair. Several dinos in several colors @$30 Sinclair rare hollow Brontosaurus (from set above) looking backward $59 Sinclair 60s colorful hardback “The Exciting World of Dinosaurs” $39 Sinclair 1960s Bronto chrome metal tray $59 Sinclair album and complete stamps set (near mint) 1935 $35 or 1938 $45 or 1959 $20 Sinclair 1934 Dinosaur book $25 & Sinclair 1964 Worlds Fair dinosaur booklet $15 Sinclair 1960s green plastic 10” brontosaur bank $24.95 Hollow, dimestore plastic dinos, 60s/70s six different $8 each (see photo) 1934 Book Alva 1960s metal 8” Brontosaurus (great shape) $89 Stegosaurus -One plate missing - $59 SRG Small metal dinosaurs Mosasaurus $89, T. rex $40, Plesiosaurus $60, Triceratops $40, caveman $85, Dimetrodon $40, Pteradactyl $49, Trachodon $40, Brontosaurus or Stego $30 SRG Large metal Tricer $79, Tracho $79, or Plesio $99 Vintage1930s “Og, Son of Fire” Metal Three Horn Dinosaur ~ Libby's Milk Premium $59 60’s Japan Porcelain Dimetrodon, Stego, Bronto, T-rex or Protoceratops 5” @$30 Nabisco silver prehistoric mammal cereal premiums early 1960s $10 ea. All 8 $75 Nabisco/Fritos dinosaur premiums, gray (60s) $5 each, 1950s green & red $10 ea. ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) grey plastic dinosaur figures. $15 each, Pteranodon $25 View Master Prehistoric Animals 1960s comp. 3 reels/booklet nm $24 Topps complete set of 12 - 2” plastic dinosaur figures Nice! Early 90s. $35 Animals Of The Past Golden Stamp Book 1968 - Unused with unstuck Stamps $35 Rare Bandai motorized Dimetrodon or Brontosaurus model kit in box @$59 Pyro Stego, Bronto,Tricer, Protoceratops, Ankylo model kits in orig. 1960s box@ $24 Palmer 1960s Mastodon skeleton or Brontosaurus skeleton $49 each MIB Og, Son of Fire dino 1960s ITC Brontosaurus or Neanderthal man skeletal model kits (2nd series box) @$59 PT back issues 23, 24, - $16 55 - $21 32, 46, 54, 67, - $11 27, 31, 33, 38, 41, 42, 45, 52, 66, 74, 75, 76, 78, 80, 82, 85, 89, 93 - 100 only $7 each on sale (PT issue prices include shipping) Please add $5 shipping in U.S. Call or e-mail me for details about condition. Mike Fredericks Prehistoric Times 145 Bayline Cir. Folsom, California 95630-8077 (916) 985-7986
Pyro kit
SRG
Linde
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Nabisco cereal prehistoric mammals
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Right: Golden Book, Stamp Version
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Left: Sinclair 1960s hardback
60s Viewmaster
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Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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The PT Interview with Richard Milner, author of “Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time.” By Mike Fredericks
Richard Milner is an author, anthropologist, and historian of science, an Associate at the American Museum of Natural History, and contributing editor to Natural History magazine. His latest book is "Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time" (Abrams, 2012), which follows his magnum opus "Darwin's Universe: Evolution from A to Z" (University of California Press, 2009.) Milner has also created a one-man musical, "Charles Darwin:Live & In Concert," and performed it all over the world--including on a cruise ship in the Galapagos Islands. www.darwinlive.com
© Chas R Knight © Field Museum, CK24-IT
eye out with the pebble when he was six, and he spent weeks lying in a neck brace in a dark room. When he got out he wore an eye patch for months. It was very painful and very sad. His sight was never the same and he was never the same. He remarked that for an artist that’s about the worst thing that can happen to you. It’s like Beethoven having to compose the symphonies when he was deaf – but he did it. PT: Both men had such fantastic dedication and courage that you just have to hold them in fantastic awe and respect.
Prehistoric Times : Your book is absolutely beautiful. I have always been a Charles R. Knight fan, because I love his artwork, but I didn’t really know much about him – the man, before reading your book. And your book tells his story so well. How did you get interested in him?
RM: The way Knight saw it, he really didn’t have a choice. He was an artist—an animal artist—from the time he was a little boy. He couldn’t do anything else. He didn’t want to do anything else. So there was nothing to do but go on.
Richard Milner: When I was a kid I used to go to the Bronx Zoo and the American Museum of Natural History with my childhood friend Stephen Jay Gould, and look at the Knight murals, which were so magical. We never guessed that the artist was “legally blind” at the time he painted some of his great murals. The first time I heard it was forty years later when I had dinner with Ray DeLuccia, a longtime museum artist and I asked him if he had known Knight. He had been a young artist at the museum when Knight was older. He recalled placing a rock in a diorama and saw Knight passing by; the glass wasn’t on yet. And he said, “Charlie!” “Yes, Ray.” “Can you tell me if this rock is positioned in a good place?” With an embarrassed laugh, Knight replied, “I can’t possibly see that from here.” He was only about eight feet away.
Knight’s passion was to draw living animals – never from photographs. And he would go anywhere to draw a species that he hadn’t drawn before. He’d travel to zoos, circuses, and other cities, and ended up drawing about 800 different species in his lifetime. But there was no market for them. Art galleries wouldn’t feature images of exotic animals. There was no such thing as wildlife art. Galleries and dealers only wanted three kinds of animals— prey, like deer or foxes that were being hunted by humans, cattle that were grazing peacefully in a rustic field, and hunting dogs. And that was it.
PT: That was the first time anyone in the museum knew? RM: Everyone knew his eyesight was poor. But this was the first time this co-worker realized he was actually blind. Knight hid it so well; he just didn’t make an issue of it. Except privately, we know, he agonized over it. And I found a heartbreaking poem that’s in the book about his blindness: From out of the darkness of a mother’s womb I came into the light And now--the Stygian darkness of the tomb— For I have lost my sight! PT: I have a question about that. I know that a rock thrown by another kid struck him in the right eye, but it was only one eye. And when he was older, he got the cataracts. But why did he have such poor vision in the other eye when he was younger? RM: He was born with poor vision. His eyes were weak and astigmatic, as were his father’s. He wrote several autobiographies, and in one of them he says he was aware that for years he put a strain on the better eye. The kid had almost knocked his 10
© Chas R Knight © AMNH
PT: Tell us how he could paint the murals since he was almost blind? RM: I wondered about that, and I found the answer in his writings. He made small oil sketches on boards that were maybe three or four feet wide, which he said was seven-eighths of the work of doing a mural. They were not rough sketches; they were exquisite miniatures of the mural. Every tree, every cloud in the sky --everything that was going to be on the mural was on that board. Then he would have assistants lay out a grid pattern and meticulously copy it large up on the wall, square for square. Only then, when it was finished, would he climb up on the scaffolding, maybe to fix an eye or a detail and sign his name. When he made the oil sketches, he had to bring his eyes a few inches from the work. If you had seen him painting, his face would have been right down next to the board. PT: Wow. RM: We used to have a blind governor of New York here. When you’d see him on television signing a document, he’d have to put his face almost right down on top of the paper. That’s the way Knight had to paint. And if his patron, the paleontologist and museum Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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president Henry Fairfield Osborn, wanted another element or revision in the scene, everything would have to be changed on the sketch, which would entail weeks of work. Once it was copied on the wall, it was too late for any changes.
two places. He was watching young Charlie grow up, and, constantly heard how talented he was from his father – and then later he’s getting it from his nephew Henry Fairfield Osborn: “I need this guy for my museum, you’ve gotta give him some money.” He really couldn’t get out of it.
PT: I love animals, too, of course, and I know that’s the way Knight started out. But how did he go from painting living animals to specializing in prehistoric animals?
PT: We can also thank J. P Morgan for enabling Knight to get into the museum on Sundays when it was closed to the public. Because Morgan was also Treasurer of the museum, that association made Knight a privileged character who was allowed to hang out in the taxidermy shop.
RM: At first, he had no special interest in painting prehistoric animals. Everyone associates Knight with the American Museum of Natural History. Some people have said to me, “He painted those backgrounds on the dioramas, didn’t he?” No, he never painted a background on a diorama. He did paintings and he did murals. He wanted to learn about how animals were constructed from the inside out. So he hung out with the taxidermists there at the museum. Taxidermy was in a very primitive state, but they were developing it. And to do that, they were doing a lot of dissections. So before long, he was doing dissections and drawing the muscles of many different animals; they would receive carcasses from the city zoos. In the book, I have his sketches of the anatomy of a cat, seal and bear. He would be able to work on these first-hand. One day when he was in the taxidermy shop, somebody said that a man from the fossil department was around yesterday, and wanted to know if there was anyone who could draw a prehistoric animal. And they said, “Sure, Charlie can do that,” So that’s how he got into it. He’d never before thought of trying that. PT: (Laughs.) He took it as a challenge. RM: Yes. So he met with the paleontologist, Dr. Wortman, and did a watercolor restoration of a pig-like mammal called Elotherium, which was an Entelodon. That was a hippo-sized pig-like animal, which, to my editor’s consternation, I captioned a “Prehistoric Porker.” He did such a good job that the young, dynamic curator of paleontology who had just been hired, Henry Fairfield Osborn, wanted to meet him. Osborn was a very wealthy, upper-crust guy from Princeton who had taught zoology at Columbia, and was a man with a plan. PT: I’ll say. RM: He had grandiose visions of what this museum would become under his leadership, and soon advanced to director and finally president. And his plan was to fill the museum with fabulous artworks of prehistoric scenes. When he met Knight, who was 20 years old, he said to himself, “This is the man who is going to do this.” And later, he actually told Knight, “I’ve always dreamed of filling this museum with great works of art done by your masterly hand--under my direction, of course.” PT: He’s usually described as pompous and imperious, isn’t he?
RM: Right. When he went to the Central Park Zoo with his father, they would go to the nearby museum, which actually started in Central Park. The first natural history collections were housed in a building that used to be a munitions dump during the Civil War – the Old Arsenal Building, which is still there today. Another heavy hitter who was contributing money to building the museum was Theodore Roosevelt’s father. Young Teddy Roosevelt was also interested in natural history and animals, and of course he created the National Parks and became our “conservation president.” Knight worked for Roosevelt’s friends Henry Fairfield Osborn, and William T. Hornaday, who was the founding director of the Bronx Zoo, and shared their passion for animals. Before coming to head the zoo, Hornaday had been chief taxidermist at the Smithsonian Institution’s museum. So now Knight is starting to paint these prehistoric animals, and Osborn invites him to illustrate an article he’s writing for the Century magazine in 1896 on the fossil mammals of the American West; that was Knight’s first public exposure of his wonderfully lifelike restorations of prehistoric animals. They were all mammals, by the way – no dinosaurs yet. This was the Golden Age of American paleontology. When Knight was still a small boy, it was still the Wild West. In the 1870s, when he was a small child, the bison were being exterminated by the millions. By the time he was an adolescent the great herds were reduced to a few fragments. PT: You have this incredible picture in your book of a mountain of buffalo skulls about to be ground into fertilizer. RM: Yes, that’s a famous photo. But they not only slaughtered buffalo for the trade in hides and bones, but the government sanctioned it to subdue or exterminate the American Indians. There was a very deliberate policy, it wasn’t an accident. They had buffalo hunters relentlessly firing on herds, to make sure the Indians had nothing to eat during the harsh winters on the Great Plains. So they had to drop their weapons and come in to the forts and reservations because they were all starving. When I was a child in the 1940s, playing cowboys and Indians on vacant lots in Brooklyn, it never occurred to us that the Hollywood Western movies we loved were glossing over the deliberate genocide of a people as official public policy. And then, ironically, the government had later reversed itself and now wanted to save the bison. That was largely due to the efforts of the Boone and Crockett Club, led by Teddy Roosevelt, William T. Hornaday, and Henry Fairfield Osborn. They called themselves “Sportsmen” --- they were really recreational hunters. They were Eastern wealthy city guys, who would head out to the remaining wilderness to play at being Davy Crockett
RM: Yes, here you had these two strong-willed creative people, and Osborn had all the power at the museum and Knight had none. But Knight had a secret weapon: his talent. When Osborn pushed him too hard, he would threaten to quit. Now, he really had nowhere to run. It was the only natural history museum in town—or in the country—that wanted such murals. Yet, when he occasionally got fed up, Osborn would usually fold, because he knew that Knight was indispensible. The problem was, from Osborn’s point of view, so did Knight! One time when © Chas R Knight Knight threatened to quit, Osborn wrote him, “You know that © AMNH would be a calamity, both for yourself and for the museum.” Knight was so dedicated to his art there was really nothing else that interested him. He was very careless about money. He’d continue doing murals for the museum even though they never paid enough, and wind up in debt each time he finished one. Osborn was always crying poverty because, of course, the museum needed millions for the building of new wings and new halls. Whatever was left over was for the artist. And sometimes it wasn’t a lot, and he’d have to go to his uncle, J.P. Morgan, the famous banker, and beg him. “Come on, J. P., give me some money for Knight’s murals, it will be the best money you ever spent.” And J. P would come through. But there was a kind of concatenation of forces at work there. Knight’s father worked for J. P. Morgan for years as his executive secretary, so J. P was getting it from Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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or Daniel Boone – hence House. They’re still the Boone and Crockett there -- in fact they‘re club. One day they realthe only elephants at the ized that they (and comElephant House these mercial hunters even more days, because the Bronx so) were killing all the Zoo no longer wants to animals and they had to display elephants. The stop. So they turned few elephants that are around and became conleft are in a wooded area servationists. It was quite of the park, which you remarkable, really. And can only see from a the Bronx Zoo was part of tramway, and they’re not that effort; in fact, its offiexposed to the public up cial name today is the close. Which is very Wildlife Conservation good for the elephants Park. And the idea was and very bad for the that they were going to put children. We had the in large ranges for elk and opportunity when we bison and pronghorn antewere kids–-and Knight lope, bears, and all the had the same opportuninative American species. ty –-to get really close to They’d have plenty of these animals and draw room to roam around and them, and look them in © Chas R Knight © Smithsonian’s National Zoo, Jessie Cohen breed, and not be confined the eye. And feed them a in small cramped cages with concrete floors, like those in the old Central peanut. Now that’s happening less and less. But we have to understand that Park Zoo. elephants need a great deal of space to roam around and they need social We tell in the book about how Hornaday had wanted to get an exhibit of company of other elephants, and it’s very hard to justify keeping them in an American bison family for the Smithsonian. And he went out in 1896, as small concrete enclosures if you really love animals. museum men did in those days, to shoot some. He rode the range on horseback for weeks across the Montana prairie and couldn’t find any herds. Finally, he found some stragglers and shot them all. And brought back their skins and bones to his museum. But there was a little bison calf that won his heart. It followed him back to camp after he’d shot her parents, and he named her “Sandy” and took her back to Washington DC. She became a celebrity animal there, but didn’t live long, and eventually joined her parents behind glass in the exhibit. However, during the time Sandy was alive, thousands of people came to see her. So Hornaday started a Department of Living Animals at the Smithsonian, which later became the National Zoo. That’s how it started. With one little bison calf. PT: Wow! RM: I think these are wonderful stories that people should know. At about this time, Charles R. Knight became fascinated and haunted by the idea of extinction. That animal species could just be wiped off the Earth, which was a fairly new concept in Western culture. Before that, people had thought that species were ideas in the mind of God and could never be completely eliminated. And they started to see that indeed they could be completely eliminated, and that it was final and they were never coming back.
But of course Knight’s numerous drawings of elephants and tigers in the zoo, which he loved so much, translated very well when he applied that knowledge to painting a saber-tooth cat or a woolly mammoth. He knew elephants and big cats backwards and forwards. So little by little he became immersed in the work and eventually did become a thoroughgoing paleoartist. Of course that term was not coined until Mark Hallett invented it many years later. PT: You were saying that he wasn’t a very good businessman. I find that so true of a lot of artists. RM: Yes, he used to undercharge magazines for his writing and drawings, and one editor wrote him, “You are a very good painter and a very poor mathematician.” PT: What about his Field Museum payment? That was the one that was so sad…
PT: So they used the bison on the postage stamp and the ten-dollar bill (known as the “Buffalo Bill”) as an icon of the new conservation movement.
RM: Yes, that was really a terrible story. After a lifetime of struggling and never getting paid properly, and wrangling endlessly with Osborn and the museum over money, they were at an impasse over a new Hall of Dinosaurs that would have been his crowning glory. Osborn wanted it. But when Osborn offered to pay for only a few sketches to show sponsors, Knight refused. “No, you’ve got to raise all the money first, and then you’ve got to let me design the entire Hall as a unity, as one integrated work of art.”
RM: Yes, and those were Knight’s drawings of a bull bison from the National Zoo on the money and stamps. The amazing part to me, as a New Yorker, is that these guys at the Bronx Zoo began building up a little herd of bison. And when they had some young adults, they would load them into cattle cars and ship them out West. Theodore Roosevelt and some of his wealthy, influential allies had persuaded Congress to create federal bison ranges in Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Montana, where they would be protected. There are 600,000 bison in the American West today-–most of them descendants of that tiny herd in the Bronx, New York City.
Knight said he had a special idea about how to depict the dinosaurs in the large murals. Osborn assumed that he would make them realistic, like his early paintings. “In fact, make it easy on yourself -- you can copy from them,” he said. Knight held his ground: “No, I will not copy from my early paintings. First of all, there are a lot of mistakes that were made over the past twenty years that we want to correct. As we’ve gotten more complete fossil skeletons, we’ve had to revise some of the reconstructions. And second, I think putting those up large on the wall in a very realistic way would be monstrous, awful, you’d hate it.”
Which is a remarkable thing. PT: Do you have more about the Bronx Zoo? RM: Well, the other thing about the Bronx Zoo is that eventually Knight did some sculptures there. PT: Boy, he really did. Those are wonderful sculptures. RM: Yes, he sculpted the African elephant heads at the old Elephant 12
Knight believed that most people at that time were frightened of dinosaurs, and considered them “sinister” and hideous. Kids didn’t yet go to sleep with Barney the fuzzy purple tyrannosaur or have pictures of dinosaurs on their pajamas. Kids found them terrifying. The tradition in Western art and illustrations was of dragons! So Knight said he wanted to depict them in a sort of dreamlike, mysterious way. He wanted to use a lot of muted blues, and rose, and turquoise in his palette, and show a sort of Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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“dinosaurs in the mist.” Osborn didn’t like the idea but Knight said that’s the way I’m going to do them. While they were arguing about this proposed dinosaur hall – and it went on for several years – suddenly he gets a commission for $140,000 to paint 28 big pictures for the Field Museum in Chicago. That was the largest fee ever offered to a painter of public murals up to that time. PT: But the Field Museum people didn’t want the “mysterious” muted treatment of dinosaurs either, did they? At least, not at first RM: The Field Museum had already searched for an artist in Europe, and the European artists said, “Why are you looking here? You’ve got the best dinosaur artist there in America: Charles R. Knight.” So he goes into this meeting at the Field Museum, and just when he thinks his financial problems are solved, he steps into his worst nightmare. They’re ready to shake hands and make a contract, when one of the trustees says, “Mr. Knight, how do you propose to paint these dinosaurs?” He tells them, and one man says, “We’d like you to brighten up your palette a bit, add a little color and brightness.” And Knight said, “I’ve had enough interference with people trying to collaborate on my work and art direction from museum people, and I’m not going to put up with it anymore.” And he turns on his heel and walks out of the meeting, and hops the first train back to New York. When he comes back home, his wife and daughter are distraught. His daughter Lucy (Rhoda’s mother) was then in her late twenties, a good-looking young woman with a very forceful personality. She promptly took a train to Chicago, located some committee members at the Field Museum, and told them: “Gentlemen, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You have just turned away the Rembrandt of dinosaur painting.” Chastised, they replied, “Young lady, go back to New York and tell your father he can paint the dinosaur murals any way that he wants.” So Knight got the huge commission and created 28 wonderful paintings there in four years, with time out to visit the Paleolithic caves of France for a few weeks.
family” is afflicted with a disease called “non-commercial genius.” “I’ve looked in the refrigerator of this famous artist and all there was is half a can of beans, some broken spaghetti, and a lemon.” Osborn wrote back that money would be forthcoming when the current sketches he had ordered were delivered – and calls the genius “a victim of Procrastination, otherwise known as The Thief of Time!” I liked that phrase so well I pasted it onto my computer. PT: Wouldn’t Knight have been more comfortable if he joined the museum staff and took a regular salary, as Osborn wanted him to do? RM: Osborn wanted him to collaborate with other museum artists. Knight said, “No, I do not collaborate with anybody. If I collaborate with anyone, then they’re no longer my own ideas, and I’d have to share credit for my paintings. As an artist, I’ve never done such a thing, and I never will. As far as joining the staff, why would you want me to do that?” He knew full well -– the reason was to have full control of him. Knight said, “You want me to become a normal museum worker. I am not a museum worker. I am an independent artist, a freelance artist, and that is how I will remain.” And by saying that, Knight screwed himself out of pension and benefits, but he didn’t care. His creative independence was more important to him. PT: I’d be interested to know where you got a lot of the paintings in the book? RM: Many of them came from Rhoda’s archive. Every time she sold a painting over the last thirty years, she first had the artwork professionally photographed before she let them go to the buyer. And this created an archive that was fantastic. So she had about 1500 large format negatives in her safety deposit box in the bank. She brought them to her living room, and I held each one up to a lamp (my light box wasn’t working), and I picked out about 360 of them, which my publisher, Abrams, then scanned for me. © Chas R Knight © AMNH
But the story of his financial salvation ended badly. He gave the money to a conservative businessman he knew, who promised to invest it and make it grow. But in 1933, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was about to be inaugurated as president, Knight’s friend, who happened to be staunch Republican, panicked. He was convinced that Roosevelt would usher in a socialist regime and destroy the American economy. So he sold all Knight’s stocks and investments for pennies on the dollar. Knight’s wife, Annie, became depressed and took to her bed. She begged Charles to talk with his friend and see if they could get any of the money back. But Charles said, “I can’t get involved in money disputes. I have to paint.” PT: I told that story to my wife, and she said, “Honey, you’d be dead.” RM: That story has never been published before. I got it directly from Knight’s granddaughter, Rhoda Knight Kalt, who is my partner in the book. In fact, Rhoda approached me to do the book and sold it to Abrams herself. PT: Oh yes, she’s been a longtime friend of this magazine. She’s great. RM: Well, she took over her mother’s business, which was promoting her grandfather’s art. Two generations of Knight women have seen to it that his legacy remains alive and appreciated by the world. While he was alive, his wife and his daughter Lucy would have to step in and agent him, try to negotiate decent fees, get publicity, act as intermediaries in his disputes with Osborn, and try to get money out of the museum. There’s a wonderful letter in the book that Lucy wrote to Osborn at Christmas time in 1924, in which she says that the head of a “certain needy Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
Also, when Rhoda’s grandmother was cleaning out her late husband’s studio, there were many cartons full of unsorted old papers and letters. She asked Rhoda to help her throw them out. Instead, Rhoda schlepped them down to the Manuscript Room at the Central Branch of the New York Public Library, where they found a permanent home in the archives. That’s one of the main places I worked, along with the AMNH, in going through Knight’s thousands of letters and papers. If Rhoda had not taken the trouble to rescue them from the trash years ago, there’s no way I could have written such a rich and interesting biography. And then we got a lot of pictures from various museums. Rhoda has maintained good relations with the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum in Chicago, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. And you’ll find that archivists of artworks tend to be very kind to descendants of the artist Concludes on Pg 49 13
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gesture means. It would seem before our meeting my visitor had a rather rough time of things as his head was now wrapped in a dirty bandage covering the cuts to his face and the broken nose he’d suffered after falling down a hidden depression. Price, against all warnings from those who’d brought him here, had wandered away, fallen down a sinkhole and knocked himself unconscious. By the time he had come to, pulled himself out of the hole and found his way back to the departure point, the rest of his group was gone. “So they just left you stranded in the past?” “Its part of the legal waver they have you sign before leaving. Basically, they have nineteen other people to protect so its part of the deal that if you get lost they’ll leave some supplies and a note to stay put while they go back, safely dump the rest of their passengers, then return with a rescue party.”
© Douglas Henderson
Corythosaurus
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002451204338
A New, Old World…Conclusion. “Astounding!” “You keep saying that,” smiles Price, “yet you must’ve considered the possibility. The stories about you claim you virtually came up with every concept we’ve ever had about time travel.” “The difference between theory and practicality,” I reply, staring at the strange man over the fire we constructed to keep the night and its dangers at bay. Price nods in agreement; though I can only assume that is what the © William Stout www.williamstout.com
“Why leave provisions at all? Surely with a time machine they could arrive almost immediately after they had just left?” “That’s out of the question. You haven’t travelled enough to learn this yet, but the time wave won’t
[email protected] open if it’s too close to another space and moment where a window has been opened. That’s one reason why time travel isn’t as common place as it could be. They usually give it 24-hours before opening a new window in the same space.’
by Phil Hore
I mulled this idea about. “That still does nothing to explain why you are still here?” “I waited a week…” said Price, absentmindedly scratching at the bandage on his face, “…they never returned.” That news did not bode well for his fellow travellers. My research had shown the time loop my machine used has a small imperfection that, in an extreme circumstance, could cause the loop to fail and send the machine spinning through time, unanchored and lost for eternity. “So how long have you been here?” © Paul Passano
“About a month I think. After a few weeks I lost track of time.” “ G o o d lord…” I sputtered, “…a month in this place without help. You could have been killed.” “Not really. I’ve learned a lot in the last couple of weeks. It really isn’t as dangerous as what people have led us to believe.” “Still, I find it astonishing you survived that long without support.”
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© Meg Bernstein
“Yeah, well it’s amazing what you can do when you have no choice.” Price says proudly. “True.” I reply, looking at this remarkable man from the future with no small amount of respect. “I really am sorry I startled you.” Price goes on, obviously u n c o m f o r t a bl e with my admira-
tion, “But I really was out of options.”
poraries. Indeed he seems interested in everything and anything I talk about; not an unpleasant sensation after some of the reactions I’ve had to conversations with people of my own time. So home, but first we have work to do, which Price seems more than happy to help me with. © Luis Rey www.luisrey.ndtilda.co.uk
In Price's travels he’s learned a lot about this strange world, more than I © Steven Correa
“Quite alright, and under the circumstances completely understandable. I feel I would do the same given the options you found yourself with.” Tossing another log onto our already sizeable fire I ask. “Now please, do go on with your tale. I believe you were saying how time travel is common place in the future.” “Not as common as, say, air travel, but it is regularly done. They have tours going to all points of historical interest. In fact, we were here visiting this area where the first time traveller landed, changing our world forever.” “Me?” I ask, a little astonished.
© Fred Dengler
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you’re quite the celebrity in the future. You’re remembered as one of the greats, so seeing your landing sight is a lot like looking at the footsteps of Neil Armstrong.”
© Phil Coles
“Neil Armstrong?” “The first man to walk on the moon. They have tours to the first moon landing sight in my time. You can walk around; even put your own foot in his footprint if you want. It’s dura-creted over now.” “The moon?” I gasp, looking up towards the heavens. High above, a slightly less scarred moon shines down on us. “We’ve managed to walk on the moon? Astounding!” I say, “One question Mr. Price, if I may?”
© Juanjo Castellano www.juanjocastellano.com
“Anything.” “What is ‘Dura-crete?’’ The face of this new world greets me with a tinge of sadness as I have decided that today will be the last day of my journey, cutting my first expedition short by a good week. Though having not said anything, Price is clearly anxious to get back to ‘civilization’ as he calls it, even a civilization nearly a hundred and fifty years from his own. I want to help this man who seems genuinely interested in my work, which has awarded me the rare opportunity of conversing about things I have never been able to talk about with my contemPrehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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could have discovered in a week. As we hike across this strange land he points things out that he learned in his time here, like how the large herds of herbivorous dinosaurs would ignore us as long as we were silent and made no threatening movements. They were also our best defense against predators as their keen hearing and eyesight would pick out danger well before our own rather dull senses could perceive them. Though the slope is slippery, I manage to trek down to the water’s edge without too much embarrassment. I look back up the long slope and wave at Price who has remained at the top, covering my descent with the rifle. He gives me a thumbs up ges-
© John F Davies
© Angie Rodriques see a large Trachodon on the far bank, lowering itself to take a drink. I had been surprised to discover that these huge creatures did not live in water like I had previously thought, but moved about on land, only approaching water when thirsty.
ture with one hand, which I assume means everything is all right. The man was definitely from the future, I no longer had any doubt of that. His manner, his speech, even some of the gestures he uses with such familiarity; many of which mean nothing to me. While perhaps one or two of these could be faked, I’m positive not all, and not with the fluency with which he uses them. I recognize the small bird that darts and © Bill J Unzen dives into the stream at my approach as a juvenile Hesperornis. It was a surprise, as I recall, from Professor Marsh of Yale University’s book that the fossils of these large, toothed birds were found in marine sediments, not fresh water. With the bird porpoising through the gently moving water, shattering its formerly mirror-like surface, I pull a small glass vial out of my pocket and gather a sample of the lake so I can study it at my leisure back in my own time, in my own laboratory. I had hoped to perform many more such experiments and explore this world a little more before returning, but Price was growing more uncomfortable with his bandages and I wanted to get him back to medical help. A loud sounding splash startles me and I look up to © Joseph Choate
Even the name I had been using turns out to be wrong. On our journey here Price informed me the name Trachodon was considered invalid in the future, and these dinosaurs were called hadrosaurs, or Corythosaurus to be exact, named for the way the beast’s head ornamentation resembled the helmet of a Corinthian soldier. Price also explained the large carnivore I had previously identified as a Deinodon was in fact part of a much larger family of carnivores called tyrannosaurs, with that particular species a small version named Gorgosaurus. I would be re-writing several papers once I returned with my findings it seems. I look back up the slope to see Price hefting the unfamiliar rifle with ease, unconcerned about the animal on the far bank. It was surprising how easily he had taken to the gun and indeed how good a shot he was with it. At first he had trouble with the firing mechanism and the great weight of the rifle, explaining he had never fired such a weapon before, though he did have experience with a 9mm. He soon explained after I quizzed him that a 9mm was the calibre of an automatic pistol people used in the future, one that could hold up to 15 cartridges at any one time. I find myself dwelling more and more on how strange everything would be for a man from the future during my own time. How alien, or worse, how primitive everything would be to him. How could I complain about losing a few days from my expedition when compared to this man who has lost his entire life, along with what must surely be a wondrous future? Capping the vial and sliding it into a protective case, I turn from the water’s edge and start back up the slope. Above, Price continues to examine the landscape for danger. When I queried him on the remarkable fact that a man, who had no trouble walking through a herd of creatures weighing five tons or more, was afraid to approach a lake, he had replied © Clinton Harris those animals were at least familiar. They moved and reacted in somewhat predictable ways, while the creatures he suspected were lurking in the water by the way all the other animals reacted to the lake would be something more primeval, and more vicious. “Edgar…Behind you!” Startled, I look
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by Mike Fredericks
© Joshua Ballze
up to see Price waving his arms and gesturing wildly at something in the water behind me. Fearful of attack I turn to see one of the most horrific visions of my life, one that will stay with me to my dying days. The Corythosaurus, a behemoth of a creature that dwarfed anything from my own time, was being dragged into the water by a fifty-foot crocodile. The herbivore was bleating and thrashing about, clearly in distress, and none of it seemed to matter to the huge reptile that had swum up from the river's depths and snared the beast’s head while it was taking a drink. Having seen hunting crocodilians before, I knew the hadrosaur’s time was short; for once in that water, the crocodile would have it at its mercy. Ice water flows through my veins at the thought that such a creature had been hunting along a waterline I myself had only just vacated. Together the two of us travel back to camp, the horrid spectacle slowly fading from memory with each passing mile. Price, seeing how upset I was, tried to occupy my mind with astounding, and sometimes disturbing, glimpses of a future that was apparently all too real. The hope of peace and prosperity to all, a hope so strong in my own time, seems to have turned into a nightmare of wars and horror weapons that mankind seems unlikely to survive. After a meal of roast Corythosaurus shank collected on our journey, Price volunteers to take first watch. I thank him and climb into the bed I had placed behind the seat in the time machine, glad to finally be off my feet after such an arduous day. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. What seems like only ten minutes later, Price is at the door. “Come on, rise and shine.” I crack an eye at him. “Anything wrong?” “It’s 3 am. Time to get up!” “Already?” I groan, levering myself out of the capsule. I slide my sore feet back into my boots, then scrounge up a jacket. Though not cold, the night’s air has definitely cooled since the heat of the day. Bleary eyed I stumble to the campfire, facing the palms of my hands towards the fire to warm them. “I’ll see ya’ in the morning.” Price grins, climbing into the time machine. Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
“Goodnight,” I reply, turning and looking towards the heavens and a night sky on fire with stars 100 million years brighter than in my own time. There, many of these same stars have already begun to fade, but not here, here they are all young and vibrant. It also helps when you can look at them through an atmosphere missing the smoke from a million coal fuelled fireplaces. Sitting down on a sizeable log that Price must have collected, I nestle the rifle in my lap and sit, staring into the blazing heart of our campfire. I now had less than eight hours to decide on our actions for the following day. My problem was simple when looked at analytically. I had managed to go back in time and meet someone from the future, someone desperate for my help. I had to return him to what would be his past until I could figure out how to get him to his own time. Above me the sky starts to grow pink with the coming sunrise; soon a decision will have to be made. I find myself smiling at the irony that the inventor of a working time machine was now worried he was running out of time. With a couple of hours hard thinking under my belt all I had managed to come up with was more questions then I had started with. If I had longer, I could probably do better, but that was impossible. Soon I would wake Price so we could pack up camp and leave for the future; with or without quieting the nagging doubts that still persisted. “I’ve never gotten used to how bright the sun is in the mornings…” complained Price, shoving some of my boxed samples into a canvas bag, “…not that I was ever much of a morning person!” I stick my head into the time machine’s cargo hold and move things around, trying to fit some of my equipment inside as well as Price’s. Maximilius sits inside his small cage, staring at me as he chewed on a piece of carrot. I had never contemplated bringing back a person with me so I had designed the cabin with minimal room to cut down on building costs. “I love the morning,” I admit through the capsule’s hatch, “Fresh clean crisp air, a bright new day. There is nothing better as far as I am concerned.” I lean back out of the hold to grab a box of soil samples and find myself looking down the barrel of my own gun. “So your entire story was a lie?” I ask. Price sits at the far end of the clearing, slowly undoing the bandages from his face, my rifle arranged menacingly across his knees within easy reach. I watch in horror and confusion as he slowly uncovers a face that is an accurate reproduction of my own. “Not all of it,” He says with a hauntingly familiar grin, “Just some of it.” “Why?” I ask, stunned at the exactness of his features. “I’d like you to meet Edgar Smith-Woodward, inventor of the time machine and owner of an amassed fortune that has made him one of the richest men the planet has ever known…that’s why,” 17
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“You’re doing this for money?” I ask, disgusted at the thought. “And who are you really?” “You mean other than you? My name is Andrew Price and I did indeed come back here on a charted tour; a tour, I may add, that has since met with a nasty and unfortunate accident thanks to a small bomb I left onboard. They, along with Andrew Price, will never return.” Price says, discarding his dirty bandages in the remains of the fire. He had murdered all those people in cold blood to insure no one would come looking for him. And all for money. “Do you really think you’re going to get away with this? You don’t even sound like me. You will fool no one with this masquerade!” “Really?” winks Price, reaching up to his throat with his right hand. I wince as he pushes his thumb deep into the skin covering his throat. “Not even with a voice modulator?” he asks in a voice that sounds surprisingly like mine. “Still, this is insane. You will never get away with it!” “But I do get away with it…” he says, pulling an envelope out of his jacket pocket, “…this letter, posted by me, to me, says so!” I snatch the letter and pull it out of its aged envelope, devouring each and every word on the page. Laid out is the plan in full, from the surgery to look like me right down to his need to learn something called ‘Gaslight English’. He was to await my return from Mount Barbara and accompany me on my trip to Lake Gregory. It also named a man as proof. “Milton Dent?” I ask, confused. “A witness to a crime that would have sent me away for life. He was the first man I ever killed,” Price answered, picking up the rifle from his lap and standing. “Could not someone else have discovered this man’s name and have used it to trick you?” I ask, staring at the two deadly black bores now facing me. “Not that name!” Price says, pulling the hammers back on the rifle. “That’s just one I gave him. The police had him hidden behind a dozen aliases so I just invented that name for him. No one could know about that name.” “Thank you…” I say, getting to my feet, “…I think I have heard enough.” Carefully I remove my overcoat, fold it, and place it on the log I had been sitting on.
did make sense to me by the way” I watch as Price finally grasps what is going on. He moves into what could be a fighter’s stance, though one I have never encountered before. “I thought of lying to you…” says Price, throwing a wild punch which I duck easily, “…but everything I came up with would have made you think about it too much, eventually seeing through my scam.” I duck another punch and step backwards to avoid a nasty kick aimed at my head. Price may have killed for the ‘mob’, whoever they are, but he defiantly never did it unarmed. “I’ve thought of everything!” Price growls, broadcasting a third punch by dropping his shoulder before throwing it, “This is going to work.” “Obviously!” I say, stepping under the lazy punch and giving him one of my own in the solar plexus. Price grunts as the air is momentarily knocked out of him. “I guess you must have just forgotten a few things though.” My follow up catches the man from the future in the jaw and he slumps to the ground unconscious. “Knowledge it seems can take you only so far and can never replace a hands-on approach, the difference between theory and practicality as you have just learned.” 66 million years later. I lay back in bed, thoughts of the past and a future catching up with me. I find myself thinking of once more getting into my machine and taking myself forward in time, to a future where old age and frailty aren’t the death sentences they are today. But no, this is my time and my place. The future is for those who belong in it. Now more than ever I’m glad I removed all technology that could have allowed people to travel into the future from their own time. If I have learned one thing in my travels, it’s that too much information can be a bad thing. It’s much better to let the future unfold than try and design it. The envelope on the table next to my bed is more than © Mike Landry ample proof of that philosophy. The door at the far end of my bedroom swings open as Bradley, my butler, enters the room. “Sir, a Mr. Davis has arrived claiming he has an appointment.” Few things get organized around here without Bradley’s help. This, however, is one of those times. “Come in Mr. Davis and sit.” I say, gesturing the second man towards a large armchair by the side of my bed, placed there specifically for visitors. Davis, a man of average height, looks, age, and possessed of an amazing ability to dress blandly, sits and opens his briefcase. “How are you feeling today Mister Edgar?”
“Sit back down.” Price snarls, “If you think I won’t shoot you, you’re wrong.”
“Dying…” I say with a wry smile, “…do you have any news for me?”
I undo my cufflinks and position them safely on top of my coat, then start rolling up my sleeves. “I must apologize, but I believe you are going to kill me no matter what, anyway.”
“Working on the brief you gave me I feel I’m finished,” He replies matter of factly, pulling a folder out of his briefcase. “You’ve found him?”
“True,” says Price, raising the rifle to his shoulder, “but it’s up to you how painfully you go!”
“Yes sir. A most colorful fellow I must say, and I’m more than a little curious how you’ve come to know him.”
“We shall see.” I say, dropping into a boxer’s posture, “Did your research show that I once boxed for my university?”
“You could say I met him a long time ago,” I grin, “What have you found out?”
“Yup,” Grins Price, “I didn’t think it matters though as I used to kill for the mob!”
“Andrew Price, aged 27, a small-time hoodlum with some big-time connections. He’s rumored to have even been a hitman for the mob, though that’s unsubstantiated.”
I watch as the man before me aims the rifle at my head and fires. When the rifle fails to discharge, I use that instance to grab the weapon and twist it out of Price’s grasp. “They frequently work better if they have a firing pin,” I say, hurling the useless weapon to the side. “But…”stammers the man from the future. “I took them out last night as a precaution.” “We could’ve been attacked; you could have killed us both.” “A risk I was willing to take, though it was highly unlikely as I knew one of us was going to make it back. That was the only part of your story that 18
“The mob!” I exclaim, suddenly remembering a 100 million year old conversation. “Go on…” I say, ignoring Davis’s expectant look. “The police have been trying to follow up those rumors, but are yet to uncover anything. The rest of the file is much the same. Whatever he’s ever been caught on has been small enough for him to wriggle free. Anything substantial and the police have never been able to finger him for it. Basically, he seems to be the luckiest man alive. He’s too small to be getting away with this without some help or by being lucky. My guess is he’ll either get caught soon or killed by someone slightly higher up on the food Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 20121
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© Dan Holland
chain. His luck eventually has to run out.” “Could it possibly be intelligence, not just luck that’s kept him alive this long?” “Perhaps,” admits Davis, flicking through his file again, “I interviewed a detective Ellis who was working his case for a while. He seems to think the man has a higher than average intelligence. He had to interview Price several times for the suspicious death of a witness who was going to finger him for a theft.” “Milton Dent.” “Uhh…no sir,” Davis says, returning to his files, “His name was Alfred Richards, married, father of two. It seems he saw this Price during an armed robbery. He was killed while under protective custody along with the two police officers watching him. This Price is one bad apple.” “As you say. Have you discovered his current location yet?” “Yes sir, and depending on the outcome of this conversation I was going to pass on that information to the police when we were finished. “Oh,” I say, a little startled, “I’d rather you didn’t. I have a little justice set aside for Mister Price myself.” “Umm…okay,” says Davis, nervously, “You know I can’t really help you out with that kind of thing.” “Not to worry, it’s nothing illegal, but I assure you he will pay for his crimes,” I explain, handing the investigator two envelopes. “What I would like from you is to hand the top envelope to him. The second envelope I would like you to hand onto “Time and Again Safaris”. I will then consider this matter closed and your part in it finished.” “Certainly sir, though if I may I was wondering what this was all about?” I lean back into my pillow and sigh. “He’s just an associate who I haven’t seen in a long, long time.” Price awakes with a start. Feeling terrible, his face sore and his stomach hurting, he gingerly stands up and looks about. Searching for Edgar, he can see nothing but their discarded rubbish. Smith-Woodward was gone, gone back to the future leaving him stranded here in the prehistoric past. Searching the empty camp, Price notices a pile of equipment under a tree. On top, under a hunting knife, sits a note which he snatches up and anxiously reads. My dear Price, I regretfully must inform you of my decision to leave you behind as I return to my own time, though, I’m sure you can understand the reason behind this. To clear up some of the confusion you must surely be feeling at the moment, I feel I should tell you the note you showed me was actually from the future ‘me’, not from the ‘past’ you. I recognized the paper it was written on as having come from the same notebook as this letter you’re currently reading. Be assured I will put this notebook aside for some distant date when I will pen you the letter you showed me, thus convincing you to come back in time to become stranded as you are. I would also like to point out the letter you presented me had named the lake and the nearby mountain as Gregory and Barbara consecutively. These are the two names I had originally given both, names that only I could know as I later switched them before meeting you. By leaving the original names on them only I, and now you, will ever know their true names. Thank you for the idea by the way, I would never have thought of this little ruse if you had not informed me about the wrong name I was using for the Trachodons. This simple switch was proof it was indeed I who returned to the future and not you. Though I Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
feel I can do nothing about your crimes that are unrelated to me, I will notify the tour company, insuring they bring you here and once they have done so, for them to do a thorough search for the hidden explosive you left onboard before they leave. Enjoy the equipment; I could not bring myself to leave you completely helpless, but I should warn you just incase you harbor a hope that one-day someone will visit and save you, please unburden yourself of this expectation immediately. I intend to make it a requirement and regulation that anyone who uses my technology can never come within a hundred years of the time you are in now. The only people that will ever visit that exact time will be you, your tour group and me…and we have already left!
© Ray O’Hare
Yours faithfully, Edgar Smith-Woodward. P.S. I hope you enjoy my face and to show there are no hard feelings between us, please find inclosed a one pound note. This insures you are now the richest man in the world! Barnum Brown would achieve fame by finding the first good specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex, but the world’s favorite carnivore was far from the only species of dinosaur Brown was responsible for. Searching the Red Deer River formations in Alberta, his small team unearthed a hadrosaur skeleton that was remarkable, not for its near completeness, but because ‘the underside of this skeleton was covered with skin impression[s] apparently continuous and I hope complete on the one side.’ Brown dubbed the creature Prosaurolophus, (part of the crestless species formerly known as Hadrosaurinae, but now called the Saurolophinae). You can see this remarkable specimen (AMNH 5240) within the hall of Ornithischian dinosaurs in New York’s American Museum of Natural History. In 1914, Brown unearthed a second specimen (AMNH 5338) and released his findings on the creature. Besides the skin on one and an odd shaped head, the remarkable fossils also revealed these dinosaurs had an ‘integumentary fold’ (ridge of skin) running the length of their body along the spine that was likely used as a display in mating. Today Brown’s find is known by the more familiar name Corythosaurus, named after its head-crest which looked a lot like the helmet of a Corinthian soldier. Even though considered an insignificant species, (by popularity, not importance) Corythosaurus should be more famous due to its remarkable history. Besides Brown’s specimen containing fossil skin, two specimens uncovered by that other famous western fossil pioneer, Charles H. Sternberg, were offered to the Natural History Museum in London. A shipment of fossil material had already successfully arrived in Europe on board the SS Milwaukee, but the second (containing the Corythosaurus) on board the steamship Mount Temple, a vessel that had achieved its own fame as one of the first ships to search for the Titanic after receiving its final distress call, had not. Both vessel and fossils were en route during the First World War when they came under attack by the German surface raider SMS Möwe. Four men were killed in the attack and the Mount Temple and the Corythosaurus joined the Titanic in the depths of the Atlantic. Like so many dinosaurs found in North America during this time, numerous sub-species of Corythosaurus were described as teams from rival universities and museums headed into the wilds of the continent and competed with each other. In the 1970’s a review of the entire genus revealed that most of these subspecies were merely different age or sex individuals of the same animal. With that, many returned to one and today we recognize C. casuarius as the only valid species.
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How to Draw Dinosaurs By Tracy Lee Ford
[email protected]
Tree Climbing theropods? If some dinosaurs did perch (as I wrote about in the last issue), how did they get into the tree? Was it WAIR (wing-assisted incline running)? Did nonavian theropods climb a tree like a tree kangaroo or a cat as suggested by Paul and Chatterjee? Or did they climb like a monkey (or as a coconut-tree climber does) with more vertical arms and legs? What I won’t be going into is any theory on how flight first began. That is a heavy topic and beyond the scope of this article, but what I will be explaining is how theropods could have climbed.
Figure 1. Claw of Microraptor showing bony ungual and sheath (gray) (Burnham et al. 2010).
showed the bird was actually running up the side of the tree at a 50-degree angle. He said the bird could climb the tree up to a near-vertical angle (Figure 2). What he showed was that the downstroke pushes the body close to the tree as the bird runs up the trunk. It was quite enlightening but not well accepted for bird–dinosaur evolution or how they climbed a tree. Dial and his “research” staff have continued to hone down the WAIR theory.
An important feature for a tree-climbing animal is having strongly recurved claws. I find it interesting Figure 2) WAIR according to Dial 2003. A, Horizontal One of the main problems is that that the claws of Archaeopteryx have been studied (walking or running only, no flapping). B, Inclined (walknot many paleontologists believed by different paleontologists who came to different ing and running only, no flapping). C, Inclined >45° (runthat dinosaurs could climb a tree or conclusions about the ability of the creature to climb. ning and flapping). D, Vertical (running and flapping). perch (see last issue about perching). Peters and Gorgner (1992) studied the horny keratin To them dinosaurs didn’t climb and sheath of claws of climbing and terrestrial birds and couldn’t perform a complete wing came to the conclusion that both types of birds could stroke to push its body against a tree. have the same curvature in their claws. They came to Senter, Gishlick, and Carpenter the conclusion that Archaeopteryx wasn’t a climber researched the arm movement in because the claws were inconclusive to being a theropods (specifically climber. Feduccia (1993), on the other hand, came to Deinonychus) and early birds. Their the opposite conclusion and found that research showed that theropods Archaeopteryx did exhibit degrees of claw curvature couldn’t raise their arms above the of modern climbing and perching birds. Recently horizontal and therefore couldn’t Burnham et al. (2010) studied the claws of perform a complete wing stroke. Was Microraptor to see if it could climb trees (Figure 1). that limited movement enough for What is interesting is that the curvature of the ungual, them to use WAIR? or bony claw of the manus, falls short of a climber, but with the keratin sheath it not only confirms a If not WAIR, then how did climbing claw, but also surpasses that of many birds. theropods get into a tree? Before I This could be true for other dromaeosaurids. What get into that I’ll explain the range of this indicates is that it isn’t just the curvature of the movement of the arm of bony ungual that determines the complete curvature Deinonychus and infer that to other of the keratin sheath but dromaeosaurs (Figures 3 to 6). Figures 3) Motion of the left elbow of also the keratin sheath According to Gishlick (2001), when the arms are folded against the Deinonychus (Gishlick 2001). A, Lateral view. B, that helps determine the body like a bird’s, the palms face medially (toward each other or Automatic flexion and extension of the wrist and curvature. Most of the supinate). The wrist has two carpal elements that allow the arm-wingtime only the ungual is elbow. C, Anterior view. ANT, anterior; D, Dorsal; V, hand to fold similarly to that of a bird but not so “tightly,” that is, digit Ventral. Arrow, Direction of the arm’s movement. preserved and not the three close to the ulna, as birds are able to do. Because of the orientasheath, and so it isn’t tion of the glenoid, the humerus cannot be raised above the scapula known how long or how without being disFigure 4): Figure 4. Motion of left shoulder of located from the sharp a claw really was. Deinonychus (Gishlick 2001). A, Dorsal view. B, glenoid. With I remember that at the Anterior view. C, Lateral view. rotation of the 2001 SVP, Dial gave his humerus to maxifirst talk about WAIR. mum elevation, After the talk I was conthe humeral head vinced that was the way remains perpennonavian feathered dicular to the theropods climbed trees. ground and the What is WAIR exactly? palms continues Dial showed a videoclip to face medially. of a juvenile bird flapAs the humerus ping and running “horiextends out from zontally” with its body the body, it angled forward, a stance rotates forward as that did look odd. Then the humeral head Dial tilted the image to turns parallel to its true angle and 20
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the ground and the palm becomes more oriented ventrally around 45°. As the humerus is brought forward, the extension of the elbow automatically extends the wrists, the hand is nearly parallel to the ground, and the palm faces anteroventrally. At the arm’s maximum forward extension, the distal end of the humerus is oriented upwards and the palm is turned dorsomedially. As the arms are brought back, the arms fold up like that of a bird. This is more of a “flying” stroke than a climbing stroke, but it explains the extent of movement of the arms. On a side note I was at a symposium (in the early 1990s) where Dr. Kevin Padian demonstrated how Deinonychus would catch its prey. He showed how the wing-arm went from folded to snatching its prey by “snapping” its hands and claws into its prey, just as Gishlick showed. Again it was very enlightening.
Figure 5): Possible grasping motion of left arm of Deinonychus (Gishlick 2001). A, Lateral. B, Dorsal. C, Anterior. D, Front view of Deinonychus grasping trunk and side view of the arm folded (T.L. Ford). ANT, anterior; LAT, lateral; MED, medial.
Another possibility of nonavian theropod climbing up a tree is like a monkey or a coconut hunter (Figure 8). Each grabs the side of the tree and climbs with the limbs extended. This would lift the body away from the tree. The dromaeosaur could use its claws to hold the side of the tree trunk and use its feet against the tree. The dromaeosaur would dig its claws into the trunk to help climb as well as use its manus claws to grab hold of the side of the tree trunk. Its long fingers would have been more vertical to the trunk, the legs would be extended more, and the feet would have a wider range of movement for climbing than the way Chatterjee has for his tree-hugging climber. Once at a branch a dromaeosaur could then climb onto the branch and perch. The arm movement that Gislick, Senter, and others show would help explain trunk climbing in theropods. Dr. Phil Manning et al. (2006) have brought up the possibility of the dromaeosaur using its “second killer claw” like a crampon (a tool a mountain climber uses). Although their research wasn’t for a theropod to climb a tree but the sides of a larger prey, here I have inferred its claw to be used in climbing a tree.
Senter (2006) studied the forelimb function between Deinonychus and Bambiraptor. The wrists in both can be flexed until the long axis of the metacarpal II forms an angle of 100° to 120° to the long axis of the antebrachium. Senter listed several possible uses of the arms and rejected the majority of them. He did accept the forelimbs for two-handed prehension using palms or claws to hold objects and hooking, which is apprehension of With the finding of microraptors, the idea of climbing dromaeosaurs objects beneath the head and torso. These move(especially small ones) isn’t so far fetched as Figure 6): Motion of the left wrist of once thought. Burham et al. (2010) listed arboments would work well with climbing. Deinonychus (Gishlick 2001). A, Lateral view. B, Sankar Chatterjee and to some degree Greg Dorsal view. C, Palmar view: ANT, anterior; LAT, real behaviors for vertical tree trunk climbing, scansorial foraging, perching, resting, pendant Paul believe that dromaeosaurids climbed a tree lateral; MED, medial. (hanging), and transversing across gaps between like a tree kangaroo. Tree kangaroos have short, branches (limb grasping). The osteologic feabroad hind feet with strong recurved claws, tures of these methods are transverse compreswhich is contrary to what dromaeosaurs have. As sion and sharply recurved claws of the manus I pointed out in the last issue, dromaeosaurs have and pes (Yalden 1985), long arms that can long, slim toes with the single sharp claw being supinate in unison (Nudds and Dyke 2009), and the second killer claw. Tree kangaroos climb a tail modified for balance or support (Ostrom tree by hugging the trunk. They spread their arms 1969). Other arboreal features are bowed limbs out, grab hold of the side of the trunk, and “walk” and phalanges (Jungers et al. 1997) and powerup the side of the tree with their legs flexed ful forelimbs (humerus, radial tuberosity indi(Figure 7). Chatterjee points out that a tree kancating strong flexion, and large sternals for musgaroo will use its thick tail to help anchor its cle attachment) (Ross 1987, Bloch and Doyer body against a tree, and he believes that is what a 2007). The posteriorly bent pubis lowers the dromaeosaur would do. The problem is that the center of gravity while tree-trunk climbing tail of a dromaeosaur is thinner than that of a tree (Burnham 1010) and while the animal is supkangaroo and couldn’t use its tail the way a tree porting itself with a stiff tail on the trunk kangaroo does. Chatterjee also pointed out Figure 7): Scansorial adaptation of a hypothetical (Chatterjee et al. 2004; Manning et al. 2009). that several modern birds use their tail as a supporting prop against a tree (woodpeckers, proavian-protodromaeosaur (Chatterjee 1997). A, Manning also suggests dromaeosaurids poswoodhewers, and creepers). Chatterjee Dorsal view. B, Lateral view modified with a more per- sessed a locking mechanism for their claws similar to that of modern birds and mammals explains that the movement of the wrists is in pendicular pes. C, Lateral view. (as I mentioned in the last issue). the plane of the forelimb. In his diagram, only the feet would move up and down the tree trunk as it shifted its arms forward (Figure 7). Chatterjee explains the sequence of climbing as follows. The forelimbs and hindlimbs moved in a reciprocal manner. In the recovery phase, the forelimbs were outstretched and swung upward, and the manus was extended to grasp the cylindrical trunk; the weight of the body was carried out by the highly flexed hindlimbs. In the next propulsive phase, the hindlimbs were extended to move the animal upward. The highly flexed hindlimbs provided much of the propulsive thrust. The swivel wrist joint and lengthening of the forelimbs in proavians were obvious adaptations that facilitated the climbing of vertical trunks. Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
Climbing nonavian theropods aren’t so far fetched as they were believed to be. I would encourage artists to include a climbing theropod in their art, either climbing on a trunk by WAIR, like a tree kangaroo, or a monkey along with perching on a branch. Could larger dromaeosaurs climb? The largest lizard that can climb trees is 6 feet long, and the larger cats that climb trees are 6 feet or more and weigh more than 100 pounds. Both weigh more than what a 6-foot dromaeosaur would weigh. By using large lizards and large cats, we can infer that the larger dromaeosaurs (Dromaeosaurus and Deinonychus) could climb trees (Figure 9). I would also like to add the possibility that some small ornithopods 21
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may have been able to climb trees, but more research needs to be done. I’ve made a Dinosaur Skull a Day 2012 Calendar that is being sold on Lulu (http://www.lulu.com). 366 different dinosaur skulls. I’ve also put up regular calendars on Zazzle (http://www.zazzle.com/ I have a store (Aletopelta) and am selling posters and T-shirts. Please visit my store). In honor of the Hadrosaur symposium, I offer a Hadrosaur skulls Calendar (Iguanodontids, Hadrosaurids), with over 70 different skulls plus a Paleozoic and Mesozoic Tall Spined tetrapods calendar with over 50 different skeletons.
Figure 8): Scansorial adaptation modified from Chatterjee showing a climbing stance more like that of a monkey.
So what’s going on with my site: Paleofile? I am still working on putting in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic fishes. I will take my time with this and not rush it. When it is finished it will have a different format and I will eventually make the rest of the site the same way. This will mean that I won’t be listing all the tetrapods but all the vertebrata of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic. This will take me a few months. After that I’ll be working on putting more illustrations on the site. The site has several areas; an easy index (just click the name and it will take you to the systematic list), or you can go directly to the systematic list (eggs and ichnology included). Click on the name in the list and it will take
Artist Jim Boydston with life sized Deinonychus made from new and recycled material. Please check out the web site to see more models, murals, and flatwork.
you to a more comprehensive listing; Genus, species, etymology, holotype (lecto, para- etc), locality, horizon (formation), biostratigraphy (faunal zone if known), age, material and referred material. There will be two faunal lists, one in which you can check your area or any area in the world to see what animals were found there and the other will be ages. If you’re interested in Biostratigraphy you can see which animals lived with which at that time from around the world. There are also smaller sections; Paleopathology, histology, extinction, taphonomy, skin, coprolites, etc. Eventually it will be fully illustrated. I hope you’ll enjoy the site and will tell your friends and colleagues. Price is $60 a year or $5 a month.
I have recently written a novel about dinosaurs called Dinosaur Isle. I hope to have the novel published soon and offered on Amazon.com. It is an up to date, paleontologically and scientifically accurate (or as accurate as I could get it) story of the possibility of ‘growing’ living dinosaurs. They are on islands near Guam and paleontologists are studying them. A new division of the UN is investigating why there are dinosaurs off the islands. Jack McConnell finds himself over his head as he investigates the dinosaurs. He has to have quick lessons on dinosaur behavior. He and his team are hampered by both dinosaurs and natural and man made disasters. If the reader isn’t careful, they just might learn something about dinosaurs. Tracy L. Ford
www.dinojimboydston.com
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Figure 9): Tree-climbing Dromaeosaurus albertensis drawn by my friend Kris Kripchak and his friend Padraic O'Driscoll
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Camarasaurus caudals
Juvenile Apatosaurus
Jurassic Dinosaur Bones & Teeth and Paleo Art (e)
[email protected] Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus and Diplodocus specimens available! Like us on Facebook PaleoGallery.com Camarasaurus Maxilla
Torvosaurus tooth
Stegosaurus
Sauropod Claw
Allosaurus tooth
Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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The largest and best Cave Bear skull ever found.
Cave Bear FOSSIL - Ursus spelaeus FORMATION - Pleistocene 42,000 to 100,000 years ago
Cave Bear skull with 150 pound black bear skull in its mouth
LOCALITY - Brasso, Romania Cave bear fossils are prepared by the world famous preparer and collector Julius Berkl from Graz, Austria. We have authentic skulls, skeletons, canine molars, and penis bones. Reproductions of skulls and skeletons are also available.
For more info: Robert Sowell 916-988-7913
[email protected]
Female Cave Bear Skeleton
Male Cave Bear Skeleton Reproduction Cave Bear Skeleton
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Dinosaur Collector News www.dinosaurcollector.150m.com
SafariLtd’s new Good Luck Mini figures
SafariLtd’s new Carnegie Museum figure of Brachiosaurus (with their older Brachiosaurus in the background)
I’m back from Toy Fair, the annual event in New York in which manufacturers from around the world show off all their latest toys. The release of museum figures is the top attraction for me at Toy Fair. There was only one museum release this year—the Carnegie Safari Brachiosaurus. There did not need to be any others. for the future. The challenge is how Brachiosaurs were unknown in the 50’s and 60’s toy to market small figures. Many comlines. (The first toy figure I ever saw was the 1988 panies have tried and given up. Carnegie Museum model by SafariLtd.) Traditionally sold in open bins as Brachiosaurus had elephantine legs, a box-shaped impulse buys, they are not popular torso, and a vertical neck. It was a whale on legs. Artist with web stores. I think they should Rudolph Zallinger’s Apatosaurus, aka Brontosaurus, be packaged as a set and sold as sets. was the standard that all long-necked dinosaur toys were based upon. Diplodocus was the longest dinosaur but Brachiosaurus The other option is as game pieces. The only new company I saw at Toy Fair was Bonaparte from the Czech was the heaviest. Brachiosaurus altithorax was discovered in the American Morrison formation, but most reconstructions used the more Republic. They sell a Prehistoric line of puzzles, models, and board games. complete skeletons of a close relative, Giraffatitan, found in East Africa. The board game had potential but used chubby dinosaur game pieces; it Starting in 1993, the sauropod of choice for kids became Brachiosaurus would have been much more appealing if they had used Good Luck figures. after the success of the first Jurassic Park (JP) movie. Now, all major toy This is true of a range of Euro games with dinosaur themes. Get some lines have a Brachiosaurus, albeit often with an artistic swan-shaped neck decent playing pieces and maybe you will sell more games. via the Hasbro JP 2 figure. Popularity and accuracy diverged as JP restoraWe received the early first runs of the new CollectA figures and there tions crowded documented reconstructions. It seems to be time for a new academic reconstruction and the Carnegie Museum has produced a new are differences in coloring from the catalog. Therizinosaurus has long arms ending in fingers tipped with huge, curved claws. It is covered with a standard for the educational toy community. For 2012, the Brachiosaurus has been redefined. I have obtained a pro- coat of primitive, down-like feathers down to the waterline. The implementotype from Safari Ltd for PT. This new 1/50th scale figure has slender legs tation of the feathers is similar to the their Deluxe Velociraptor but more to dissipate heat and a longer torso. There is less difference between the finely done. There is a feathered crest on the head and back like last year’s length of the front and back legs. Nostrils are in front of the face. The giraffe Concavenator and there are tufts on the forearms. The base color is bronze analog has been used by Safari sculptor Forrest Rogers to create a slender with green and yellow dry brushed on for contrast. These display structures animal in motion. The head is extended mid level, arching to the left. It is beg for color and that is why CollectA is popular for repaints. There is no easy to imagine a pair of these animals neck fencing as they competed for direct evidence to support the existence of feathers on Therizinosaurus, breeding rights. You should buy two of them. The coloring is a green shade and it is often reconstructed with the standard featherless body of old with a waterline and a strong red flush from the top of the skull running dinosaur depictions. Evidence for feathers comes from its smaller relatives along the spine to the tail. These are the colors you might expect when that are extrapolated as display structures. This is the most modern-looking model I have seen. advertising breeding fitness like the comb and wattles of a rooster. CollectA’s Utahceratops is a cutting-edge horned dinosaur found in 2000 I was partial to the 1/40th scale standard. I still am but I think it is time for a new scale standard for museum figures. The highly detailed models and described in 2010. It is about two-thirds the size of its famous relative that the public expects are at 1/40th scale—too expensive to be marketable Triceratops. This is a medium-sized herbivore with legs rendered under the for the sauropods. Rather than having each model with its own scale like the body. The high frill is slightly indented inwards with short brow horns in Bullyland Stuttgart line, I would prefer to see a relative scale as Wild Safari front that are out to the side rather than forward. The coloring is of subdued uses and Marx used. Do not make my Velociraptor the same size as my shades of tan and brown with just a hint of red along the eyes. The sculpture Allosaurus. Even if they are not the same scale, make the larger animals big- communicates the feeling of a graceful and fast animal like one of the herger than the smaller animals. A 1/50th scale standard works for the larger bivores from the Serengeti. dinosaurs and it seems like a practical approach that retains the educational Miragaia is part two of the CollectA’s romance with Late Jurassic Portugal. value while supporting the market realities. Safari Ltd popularized and You now have a companion of compatible size for your Lourinhanosaurus developed the Museum market and now dominates it by setting the new from last year’s CollectA. This unusual stegosaur catches your eye with its long neck and upward stretched neck for high feeding. Take away the doustandard for Brachiosaurus. Good Luck Minis are an overlooked treasure. There is a tendency to con- ble row of plates that morph into spikes and you would have a plausible centrate on large figures but collectors know small figures often become the looking medium-sized sauropod. This animal does not have to grub in the most sought after. Good Luck Minis are quality mini figures by Safari Ltd. ground for food like the American Stegosaurus. The color is a conservative also seen at toy Fair. Safari Ltd. produces a range of farm, jungle, and bronze with green airbrush starting at the water line, contrasting with the embedded osteoderms, plates, and spikes. marine minis but the five Prehistoric Provocative ocher spikes display from the shoulare what I like best. Brachiosaurus, DinoDan figures vs Dino King figures ders similar to Asian stegosaurs. No spikes for the Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, tail or otherwise have been found but the convenDimetrodon, and Stegosaurus so tion has been to assume spikes for the tail but not far make for a small set. The figures for the shoulders. This should stir the pot on the are in a Wild Safari style in a flexible on-line Dinosaur Toy Forum. vinyl. I would like to see an even The CollectA vacuform display is not intended dozen figures. There are one or two for general sale but only as a merchandising disnew figures a year so I have hopes 26
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play, so naturally I wanted one. This is a percompanies this year. The Brachiosaurus was Papo’s new hunting T. rex with fect low-cost value-added display item and I not displayed at Toy Fair but their other new older pose behind. thank CollectA for giving me one. This is a figures were there—a retro tribute to the 60’s great idea for independent entrepreneurs to with their standard homage to JP. They have market to collectors. repainted their older squatting T rex. Dan of Dan’s Dinosaurs (www.dansdiImex will market the old Toyway museum nosaurs.com) sent us a review copy of the new figures in the spring with new packaging. T. rex from Papo of France. While many have They are being sold again in the EU. compared it to the Peter Jackson King Kong’s Bullyland was not there and has been sold Vastatosaurus rex, I would compare it to the again. The new owners may be bringing back Hasbro young T rex toy (Papo also offers new some discontinued figures. baby T. rex figures as well). I have always seen Vastatosaurus as a carcharTomy from Japan has replaced Learning Curve for the Dinosaur Train odontosaurid. The Papo figure looks agile and the teeth and jaw are well franchise. New figures will be released: Maiasaura, Amargasaurus, and implemented. This is a long-limbed, cursorial animal ready and propor- Iguanodon. Their future direction is away from the realistic figures and will tioned to run down prey. The teeth are the best feature; very irregular as you now concentrate on the anthropomorphic lead characters and large animamight expect in an animal that constantly loses and grows teeth. The articu- tronics figures. Anecdotal evidence from PT retailers is that sales were dislated jaw is as well executed as I have seen in a figure. The top of the skull appointing last year. is a rugose mosaic GeoWorld has replaced the Wild creations for the Nickelodeon Dinosaur of ridges. The Dan franchise. GeoWorld is best known as the Italian fossil company owned Three of CollectA’s new 2012 line arms are of a by the paleontologist Dr. Stefano Piccini. ToysRUs is carrying the solid includes Miragaia, Therizinosaurus length proportion- Dino Dan figures. There are also large and medium articulated figures. A & Utahceratops ate to this look. repainted and extended version will be offered as Jurassic East. There are Toy Fair was currently 72 figures for Jurassic East with 28 projected for the fall. The conbusier this year tent and design is similar to the Sega Dino Kings. The Megaraptor is in the but the booths style of the Sega reconstruction. were smaller and Playmobile has released its mammoth-themed sets with all the traditionthere were few al rock formations, plants, and cave people. Pieces are typically rich in Shown on special CollectA display new companies. detail and varied in content, with quality production. New dinosaur sets are base The general trend scheduled for next year. is small-scale for figures and more price sensitivity. The days when designs and product methods were done without concern for cost are over. The SafariLtd booth was a tribute to the beautiful art of Luis Rey this year. His artwork was mounted on light boxes all around the booth. The Wild Safari releases were on display—Ceratosaurus, Acrocanthosaurus, Dracorex, and Vagaceratops. They were much stronger looking figures in person than the initial pictures on the web. There are two new Prehistoric skull toobs. Safari Ltd remains a leader by combining its vision for the future via new products and expertise in executing production and distribution through leveraging the Internet to interact with customers worldwide. Check out Safari Ltd on Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook. CollectA has a large and exciting range of new figures for both their Deluxe and their standard line. Design and production show improvement over last year’s releases. It continues to be a company of vision that brings out new products that add value, such as the interlocking trees with small plant eaters and the carcasses for the meat eaters to feed on. These are great accessory for gamers, especially. Dispelling speculation, Schleich has released 12 figures for a new line in 2012. Marketing Director Mary Ludovico says the three levels of dinosaur experience offers compatibility and playability. Schleich skipped 2011 to concentrate on a large 2012 medium sized figure release. Schleich has long practiced consistency of design so that the dinosaur figures from their three lines are mutually compatible. While the large Replicasaurus line still has Giganotosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, Spinosaurus, and Quetzalcoatlus, the new medium series reflects the Replicasaurus style but has smaller upgraded reconstructions. The Giganotosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, Spinosaurus, and raptor all have moveable jaws. The Tyrannosaurus is bipedal like the discontinued hunting T rex but with better proportions. The raptor is in the style of the small line. The Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Quetzalcoatlus, and Saichania are based upon the Replicasaurus figures done in conjunction with the Humboldt Museum. These will be welcome additions for Schleich collectors. Schleich remains a major player in the figure market with a strong customer base and a broad product offering with sophisticated production and distribution. Papo of France looks like it has less varnish on the figures this year. The company seems to be trying for a new, more accurate and less expensive product line. Their booth moved down to the second floor with the smaller Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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LEFT: Three cavemen figures.
The outside two are copies of Marx 6” figures made in Asia and probably not worth much. The center figure is made of a rubbery plastic, made in Hong Kong and missing his weapon.
LEFT: Jeff Bonzek made this base out of plaster on wood and then used original hard plastic marbled and hard plastic non-marbled dinos on top like Marx did for store displays in the early 60s. RIGHT: Vintage sew-on patch from the famous road
side attraction Dinosaur Land Park in White Post, Va that features “over two dozen colorfully-painted, old-style brutes.” I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that their logo closely resembles an even more famous amusement park in Anaheim, Calif, right?
ABOVE: Prototype cereal premium of a walking
Tyrannosaurus toy that never went into production - from Creative Merchandisers of Chicago
LEFT : Author Donald Glut sent this picture and says,
“Back when I was in the 4th grade a fellow student flashed this book cover at me from across the classroom, but never showed me the book up close. Now I have a copy; the first time I've seen one in nearly six decades. As it turns out, there's nothing inside the book relating to dinosaurs and there's not even an explanation for the cover, but the Iguanodon is based directly on the full-size figure at the Hagenbeck zoo near Hamburg, Germany.
BELOW: Jeff Quinn sent this photo of
his Charles R Knight paper diorama from 1937
ABOVE RIGHT (2 PHOTOS): Your PT editor obtained these two Marx Toy Company prototype dinosaur figures from 1960 recently for his collection. These are the original sculptures created by Joe Ferriot for Marx to use to make the molds for these toys for their 2nd series of prehistoric animal figures. The tags show their names (Iguanodon & Parasaurolophus ) and read, “Ready for casting.” The story: A clock collector was invited to the home of the widow of the Ferriot Brother’s art director. After seeing her antique clocks, she told him she had thirty old boxes in the basement that turned out to contain numerous prototypes of many Marx and other manufacturer’s toy figures. Several other prehistoric animal prototypes were found: Marx Mammoth, saber-toothed cat,etc. He sold his half but split the haul with Francis Turner, the owner of the Marx Museum in Ohio (www.marxtoymuseum.com) who will display his.
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Kileskus aristotocus the Noble Lizard
©Andrey Atuchin
dinosaur and was related to the North American and Asian species. Kileskus is even older than the Chinese Guanlong dinosaur, making it a contender for one of the earliest tyrannosaurs. The partial skull remains do not reveal the presence of a crest rising up from the snout, but similar finds from close relatives suggest that there may be one. The Sharypovo Kileskus, judging by the size of the jaw, had a skull about 50-60 cm in length and grew to be 5-6 meters long, twice the size of his Asian and European cousins. It also had forelimbs with three fingers. Kileskus probably fed on ornithopods, sauropods and stegosaurs. It’s size allowed it to hunt these other reptiles. Beyond this the only thing that can be said about Kileskus is that it appears to belong in a basal position of the Proceratosauridae, the group thought to belong alongside the earliest tyrannosaurs. Illustrations are copyrighted and used by permission of Andrey Atuchin
Right: Paleomir is a Russian magazine for paleophiles that features Andrey Atuchin’s art
Andrey Atuchin, Russian scientist and illustrator, prepared the following article for the Sharypovo Natural History MuseumIn the Krasnoyarsk region, almost on the border with the Kemerovo region is the small town of Sharypovo. The Taiga stretches for hundreds of kilometers west of here, by-passing the Kuznetsk Alatau range of mountains. East and north-west, lay the flat plains of the Siberian steppe.Fifteen kilometers beyond the outskirts of Sharypovo is the Five kilometer long trench of the Berezovsky coal mine producing lignite coal from swamps of the Jurassic period, dating from the Bathonian age. Crowning this coal seam is a 50 meter layer of clay and sandstone. In the year 2000, Sergei Krasnolutskiy, from the Sharypovo Museum found a small inter-layer deposit, replete with the remains of fossil animals. Recovering them was not easy. So as to not miss small bones and teeth, it was necessary to wash and dry the deposits first and then sift everything through a fine sieve. Soon the location of the Berezovsky quarry became famous among paleontologists from around the world because continental deposits of Middle Jurassic vertebrates are very rare. This location became a real hot spot and proved to produce some very rich finds. Apparently, this area in the Mid-Jurassic was a vast lake and river system with rich vegetation and a diverse wildlife. These clays and sands produced the remains of fish, amphibians, and fresh water turtle shells, lizards, crocodile osteoderms, mammal-like tritylodonts, Pterosaurs and carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs. Some of the major bones discovered were a new species of Stegosaurus. As the quarry was being developed, more and more material was being dumped away to extract the coal seams. In order to save as much fossil material as possible, excavations were held every summer, almost always making new discoveries. In the summer of 2007, during another regular paleontological expedition, Sergei Krasnolutskiy stumbled upon a small fragment of the lower jaw bone of a predatory dinosaur. Further excavations in the same area produced new find material, including phalanges (finger and toe bones) maxillary (Skull) and vertebrae. Much of the material was shattered pieces. Krasnolutskiy showed his finds to the director of the excavations, Alexander Averyanov, but his joy was soon replaced by disappointment when it became apparent that there was no certainty that all the elements could be easily put back together. It took Krasnolutskiy two weeks to reassemble all the material and in the winter of 2008 presented the assembled fossil material to Averyanov, who in turn made a description of the finds. The predator was named ‘Kileskus aristotocus’ which means ‘Lizard of noble birth’. (kilesk means lizard in the local Khakas language). He was a new genus of Tyrannosauriod 32
Translated from Russian and edited in English by Paul McFarland.
© Andrey Atuchin
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reference are limited, and like many stop motion dinosaurs, the color can seem to change from scene to scene. However, the creature is a basically a greenish brown with a yellowish underbelly. First, I primed the completed kit in FW Inks Cool Gray, but you could use spray primer (which I did use on the base). I use an Iwata HP-B shot at between 12-15 PSI most of the time. After a couple coats of that, I sprayed in FW Inks Flesh in the mouth and top coated that with Freestyle Lifetone’s trans-
Sean Kotz’s
The Crater Lake Monster
parent Natural Flesh. When dry, I lightly brushed on Cremacoat’s Flesh, a craft paint. The end result is an orangish pink color that looks natural.
For this model building installment, we turn the clock back to a very cool cinematic prehistoric horror, 1977’s Crater Lake Monster. While there is not a lot to say for the quality of the film itself, the snarling titular plesiosaur is a well designed stop motion menace. This kit is from Gillman Productions, a new company employing some of the best sculptors in the business. Joe Laudati created this kit which comes in seven parts including a one piece base. CONSTRUCTION: First, wash the kit in warm soapy water to remove any oils, mold residue or other impurities and allow it to dry completely. My cast was very clean and required almost no clean up with a hobby knife; just a little around the base and between the teeth, which, by the way, were very solid. With a little trimming the front fins fit nicely into the body. The head comes in two parts that lie flat against the neck, which attaches at a slight angle to the body. To secure the parts, I used 5 minute epoxy in the center with CA glue around the edges, quick set with a spray or two of CA glue accelerator. I cut posts from nails to support the parts, but it is not really necessary. A little rolled Aves putty filled the gaps. PAINTING: The plesiosaur is not particularly complex in its color scheme, but it is hard to figure out just what that scheme is. Prints of the film are poor and photo stills for Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
The teeth were painted with Americana Buttermilk thinned down with a few drops of Future floor wax in a ratio of about 4 parts paint to one part Future. When dry, they got a light coating of transparent Cocoa Brown and Leather Tan, both from Lifetone, followed by more Future on the mouth to give it a wet look. The top coat of the skin first got a light application of FW Inks Burnt Umber followed by Antelope Brown around the edges. The chest and belly got a coat of FW Inks Raw Sienna that overlapped the browns for a blended look. I then sprayed Transparent Medium Green on the Antelope Brown and lightly dry brushed Americana’s Fawn (a great color) over the whole kit. When that dried, the top was treated again with Lifetone’s Transparent Medium Green and misted with Dark Green and more Antelope Brown. The kit was then sealed and the entire thing got a Burnt Umber oil wash. The eyes were painted white. I then put in a tiny black pupil with the tip of a toothpick and coated with Tamiya Transparent Gloss Yellow to finish it. THE BASE: The base is the most time consuming part of the build up because of the hapless local yokel lying dead beneath the monster. I utilized well over a dozen paints for the base and several techniques, but there just is not space for that here. However, you can get the complete story at creaturescape.com. and while you are online, check out gillmanproductions.com. They have hit the scene big with some amazing dinosaur kits.
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What’s New
Most of you reading this column will be aware of the Aurora Two views of By Mike Fredericks Plastics Shane Foulkes' new Corp. and Torvosaurus I’m back again to describe some of the latest prehistoric their many animal models and figures we have received great model here at PT; some very nice pieces, indeed. kits from our youth. And, of course in the 1970s, they produced Sculptor Shane Foulkes continues to be their Prehistoric Scenes line of model kits, a line busy creating new dinosaur resin model kits. beloved by children of that era (and to this day). For You will remember that Shane’s Allosaurus years now, Mike Evan’s company Alchemy Works was voted best dinosaur model kit of 2011 has been producing their own line of prehistoric aniby PT readers like yourself and announced mal resin model kits that we all wish Aurora had in the last issue of Prehistoric Times where I included in their original series, and the latest is reviewed it. This time I hold another theroZuniceratops. Zuniceratops (Zuni-horned face) pod kit from Shane that is just as awesome; was a ceratopian dinosaur from the Late Shane Foulkes’ Torvosaurus. Torvosaurus Cretaceous Period of what is now New is a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived durMexico. It was a small, horned plant-eating ing the Late Jurassic period in North America. dinosaur (13 feet) that surprisingly, was disTorvosaurus was a huge carnivorous dinosaur covered by an eight-year-old boy. Mike hired with sharp, pointed teeth in large powerful veteran dinosaur sculptor Chris Lynch to crejaws and was the biggest meat-eater of its time. ate this approximately 10" long resin kit. To It was similar in appearance to create his Zuni, Chris sculpts realistically but Tyrannosaurus but with larger arms and lived also keeps in mind the style of the old Aurora about 145 million years ago. kits. The 13 piece, bubble free model kit in The Torvosaurus’ parts fit nicely together; 1/13th scale is $89.95 including postage. The only a small amount of putty is needed to hide head rotates right and left, jaw opens and closthe seams. This is especially good for novice es and it includes moveable limbs and a namemodel builders reading this. This Torvo kit could Two Views of Alchemy Work’s Zuniceratops plate for the special base, just like Aurora used be a very good second or even first resin dinosaur to offer. A flowering plant for the base is cast kit for you to tackle. The model is solid casted in a reddish colored resin. Get your copy of resin by Alchemy Works. (roto casting on this kit the Alchemy Works Aurora “What If ” will be available soon.) The casting is extremely Zuniceratops - Prehistoric Scenes now by ewell done. The upper jaw of teeth hang out over mailing Mike Evans at mikeevans@usapaththe lower lip. How this was cast without having way.com or 817-471-9096 thealchemyundercut problems, I’ll never know. Thin, spiky works.com scutes stick out from the back of the head and neck. Some of these are bound to break off but Shane is good to include some extras to take their I know you have all been enviously looking place. The kit comes in 7 pieces and is about 22” over the beautiful two page ad spreads in long by 7” tall. Torvo is portrayed walking on a recent issues of PT from The Master Fossil rocky base with great muscle tones and pure Company, also known as Griffon Enterprises. I grace. The wrinkles, the scaly skin, the scutes, asked Tomi from Griffon to tell us about the the overall cleanness and finished look to the company. sculpting - it’s all you would expect from Shane Griffon “Griffon Enterprises is one of a few large and more! Torvosaurus certainly gets the PT Enterprises’ companies in Japan handling dinosaur action figseal of approval and guarantee of buyer happiVelociraptor ures and toys, manufacturing products in its own ness. You will love your model of this amazing figure in its factory. The company exports and sells high predator from the Jurassic. packaging. quality products all over the world. As a manuTorvosaurus kit is 199.00 plus $12 shipping facturer, the company is particular about mainon US orders. Outside the US, contact Shane. taining the quality of every stage of production, Ask Shane about his buildup and painting serincluding molds, coating and assembly, and its vices too. Upcoming models for 2012 include local staff in the facilities follow exhaustive Sauropelta 1/15th scale, Triceratops 1/35th maintenance and work to make high quality, safe scale, life size Velociraptor, life size products. And its high level of coating and repliStegosaurus bust, Baryonyx 1/15th scale, cation technology allows the company to show Quetzalcoatlus 1/15th scale, Chasmosaurus the ability to manufacture fossil and archeologi1/15th scale and others planned as well if time cal replicas, and dinosaur models. This year, the permits. He is now taking preorders on company is starting a series of high quality Sauropelta. $175 includes shipping as preorders dinosaur models.” only-- once in production price may be higher! So, the company prides itself on quality disGet your order in early.
[email protected] or play models and to prove it has sent us their first (636) 467-7440
in review
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Mojo Brand prehistoric animal figures
CollectA Dead Triceratops skeletal dinosaur f i g u r e : Ve l o c i r a p t o r . This large, amazingly well done piece was sculpted by Shigeru Yamazaki and supervised by Dr. Yoshio Ito. This is a beautiful skeletal Velociraptor dinosaur posed triumphant over its prey. It is made of light but sturdy ABS, CollectA PVC. The height is over 16” tall. Therizinosaurus The base with Protoceratops skull is included and the retail Price is $98. It includes beautiful, professional packaging. You will love it! Check out their ad in this issue and their internet site. The company is looking for distributors here too.
historic animals, but I’m mildly surprised that Papo did not sculpt a mosasaur with a more “modern” appearance (read: scientifically accurate). Although, it shouldn’t surprise me as their dinosaurs, for the most part, have been based upon those in Jurassic Park movies. Never let it be said that I’m not a fan of this either, as I find Papo’s tyrannosaurs to look pretty fantastic and their new walking version is the best yet. Scientific accuracy aside, you have got to love the overall look of this awesome creature. The design is fantastic; but you’ve really got to love the teeth in the lower (moveable) jaw. I can guarantee you that this T. rex has never sat in dentist’s chair. His teeth are all misaligned with one pushing another out of the way, and best of all, one on the front teeth of the jaw aims almost straight forward, it is so crooked. As nice as this figure is, I must admit to being a little Papo Walking T. rex
Papo Baby T. rex
surprised at how pricey it is ($29.99). Nonetheless, I promise you will love it when you get it. Papo Tylosaurus
I believe Randy Knol has described the Mojo Brand line of prehistoric animals in his PT column but I have not and thought I would make you aware of them here. At this time the line includes a dozen very nicely done prehistoric animal figures. They include all the most popular dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus rex (with new larger scale version coming out this summer), Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Brachiosaurus, Parasaurolophus and a pair of raptors in different poses. The series also includes a giant Suchomimus croc and Tylosaurus. For mammal lovers, you can pick up their saber-toothed cat, mammoth and mammoth baby. These are well done figures that will make a nice addition to your collection. You can purchase the entire line from http://tgftoys.com. I don’t like sending you to a retail outfit that doesn’t advertise in PT but I don’t believe any of our advertisers offer the Mojo line and I found this company to be very good with great prices and free shipping (if you order the entire set). The CollectA Company continues to amaze with their intrepid production of prehistoric animal figures never created before (and in some cases, almost unheard of before.) The first wave of their 2012 releases were sent here for review and we love what we see. Both Randy Knol and I received their interesting dead Triceratops (no one else offers one of these), Utahceratops ( a recently discovered horned dino), Miragaia (Safari Ltd won for best toy in PT last year for their version of this long-necked stegosaur), Therizinosaurus (a gangly but interesting long-nailed dinosaur. Was it a plant-eater, meat-eater or both?) and Tyrannosaurus with Struthiomimus prey in mouth. We all saw the T. rex snag a Gallimimus in Jurassic Park - now own a similar dino figure). Get your CollectAs from www.toyboxmania.com The Papo Company of France continues to produce interesting dinosaur figures. (Get your Papo at Dansdinosaurs.com) Dan sent the new walking T. rex and the Tylosaurus for review. Papo has also produced a baby T. rex in both a green version and a brown version. They produced brown and green versions of both their original T. rex and their Velociraptor too. Dan says both of the original versions of these two figures have been discontinued (so better get ‘em while you can.) Papo’s new Tylosaurus is obviously based upon the Charles Knight painting of this animal (with an angled back) that you can see attacking a Archelon turtle at the beginning of our interview on page 10. Never let it be said that I am not a fan of retro depictions of prePrehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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Hesperornis
needed to prove the theory was correct, and then came O.C. Marsh, his fossil horses, and, more importantly, his discovery of toothed birds.
by Phil Hore
Huxley would later write on his visit: “in 1875, the discovery of the toothed birds of the Cretaceous formation in North America, by prof. Marsh, completed the series of transitional forms between birds and reptiles and removed Mr. Darwin’s proposition that ‘any animal forms of life have been utterly lost, through which the progenitors of birds were formerly connected with the early progenitors of the other vertebra classes’ from the region of hypothesis to that of the demonstrable fact.” In other words, although Darwin himself felt there would never be any fossil evidence to this theory, Marsh and his birds had just proved him right.
[email protected]
In 1871, during Marsh’s second western expedition, the paleontologist was quick to realize he had discovered something special:
© Douglas Henderson http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002451204338
Woe to the opponents of evolution In 1876 there was a meeting of two worlds. O.C. Marsh—America’s first paleontologist and the man who had been the spearhead in the resurgence of a science that had its origins in the 1820s when the first scientific papers were produced on the prehistoric monsters we know as dinosaurs—was visited by one of the surviving men from this pioneering age of paleontology. Thomas Huxley, the man nicknamed “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his obstinate defense of the theory of evolution, was touring the United States and made a special effort to visit Marsh and his world-famous fossils. C h a r l e s Darwin’s The Origin of Species had been © Luis Rey out for years, www.luisrey.ndtilda.co.uk and the evolutionist had been struggling with getting his grand theory accepted. The problem for Darwin was that he had no proof because the fossil record simply didn’t contain the transitional forms that would be the evidence his supporters 38
© Joshua Ballze Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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“One of the treasures secured during our explorations this year was the greater portion of the skeleton of a large fossil bird, at least five feet in height, which I was fortunate enough to discover in the Upper Cretaceous of western Kansas. This interesting specimen, although a true bird. . . differs widely from any known recent or extinct forms of that class. . . . The bones are all well preserved. The femur is very short, but the other portions of the legs are quite elongated. The metatarsal bones appear to have been separated. . . . I shall fully describe this unique fossil under the name Hesperornis regalis [the ‘regal western bird’].” At least five feet tall, with an elongated neck and large feet, it was obvious the bird was aquatic like a modern loon or grebe. Further description was impossible though because the specimen was missing the all-important head. The expedition did not stay long to uncover more, however, because “the extreme cold, and danger from hostile Indians, rendered a careful exploration at the time impossible.” Nevertheless, Marsh was far from done. “In June of the following year, the writer again visited the same region with a larger party and a stronger escort of United States troops and was rewarded by the discovery of the skeleton which forms the type of Hesperornis regalis. Various other remains of Odontornithes [Toothed birds] were secured and have since been described by the writer. Although the fossils obtained during two months of exploration were important, the results of this trip did not equal our expectations, owing in part to the extreme heat (110° to 120° Fahrenheit, in the shade), which, causing sunstroke and fever, weakened and discouraged guides and explorers alike.” Marsh would prove his own statement wrong as well when he had carefully inspected the fossils collected during this second expedition. This time he had uncovered part of the skull and was surprised to discover his bird had numerous reptilian-like teeth. Pliosaur and Hesperornis © Douglas Henderson “The bill was long and was provided with small but effective http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002451204338 conical teeth set in the jaw firmly. Those of the upper jaw were end. Its position was close to the ribs, and it was probably nearly or quite few in number and set in the back part, whereas those of the mandibles concealed beneath the integuments, as in Apteryx. This rendered the rudiformed a complete series. The jaws were united in front by cartilage only, mentary wings of no possible service in flight or swimming.” Given time permitting considerable mobility, which was doubtless very serviceable in those wings may have disappeared altogether. swallowing their prey, which must have consisted of fishes caught by divEventually Marsh had fifty specimens in his collection and concluded ing. The bones of the body were solid that “the fortunate discovery of these interesting fossils [did] much to break throughout, not hollow, down the old distinction between Birds and Reptiles.” Mistakenly, Cope also as in almost all living received a box of Marsh’s fossils, some containing specimens of the prebirds. The sternum had cious birds. In a letter to his old friend, Cope wrote: “Your bird with teeth is no keel, as in the flying simply delightful. Vae evolutionis opponentibus! De mortuis nil nisi birds and those descend- boneum! [Woe to the opponents of evolution! Nothing (to speak of) but the ed from flying birds, but was as in the ostrich. The vertebrae and skeleton, aside from the teeth, are not unlike those of modern birds and, were the skull yet unknown, would be unhesitatingly referred to the subclass to which the ostrich, cassowary, and rhea belong.”
© Jamie Stroud Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
© Phil Coles
Marsh also recognized: “The wings were represented by the humerus only, which is long and slender and without any trace of articulation at its distal 39
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© Tracy Ford
© Mike Landry
Toy based upon BBC’s Primeval TV show
birds like ostriches saw them transferred to the Palaeognathae (‘old jaws’). Today these similarities are considered a case of “convergent evolution” more than some unknown and unlikely relationship between both groups. Indeed Hesperornis is likely related to no living bird and may even make up a third group along with the Palaeognathae and Neognathae (‘new jaws’). The exact origin for these birds is still being debated, though the oldest and most primitive form was likely Enaliornis found in early Cretaceous rocks in Cambridge, England. Canadaga arctica was one of the last and largest of the Hesperornithiformes, and living in the cooler conditions around Alaska and Canada, these birds likely reached their large size (over 5 © Frederik Spindler
bones of the dead!].” Marsh was less than pleased with this development and claimed Cope had stolen the boxes, souring their strained friendship forever. These toothed birds were quickly placed alongside the world famous Archaeopteryx, found and described in Germany just a few years earlier. While one was to become the poster child for transitional forms and the champion of the evolution movement, the other, arguably more impressive (because of its size and numbers), became an almost forgotten creature. Today Hesperornis is often only © Terry Wilson remembered by us paleontophiles and even then often as an afterthought, something to be seen in the background being chased by a fearsome mosasaur or diving past an enormous Archelon. Hesperornis is the most famous of a group of large, flightless, aquatic birds that once swam the shallow seas that dominated the Northern Hemisphere during the Late Cretaceous. Although there are about half a dozen species recognized today, these are so similar (mainly their size differentiating them) that whatever description you give for one is likely correct for the others. As a group they’ve gone through several positional changes within the bird family tree (Aves). Marsh originally lumped them with Ichthyornis in a group he called the “Odontornithes,” or ‘toothed birds’. Later, similarities between Hesperornis and modern 40
www.frederik-spindler.de/news-infos.html feet), possibly because of the cooler climate of the north. Much like emperor penguins, large bodies are far easier to keep warm because they have a smaller surface-to-body ratio than tiny animals (since tiny bodies lose heat far faster than large ones). It often surprises people when they learn that penguins are purely Southern Hemisphere birds, yet we have another example of convergent evolution—the Northern Hemisphere’s puffin—a bird that looks and lives like a penguin but has managed to retain the ability to fly. This north-south rivalry seems to also have occurred in the Cretaceous because there is the possibility of a hesperornithiform in Antarctica, though officially Polarornis has been described as an ancestral loon. The presence of the similar Neogaeornis from Cretaceous rocks in Chile, along with the chances of these birds being classed in the Hesperornithiformes being slim, implies that both may be part of a similar-looking but unrelated Southern Hemisphere group of toothed birds. This could mean, though, that the more famous northern Hesperornithiformes went extinct at the end of the Mesozoic, whereas their southern cousins have survived as some of the oldest, most primitive bird Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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species we know today. Charles Darwin recognized that these birds helped vindicate his theory, and on the thirty-first of August 1880, just 2 years before his death, the evolutionist wrote Marsh to thank him:
© Tracy Ford
© Phil Coles
My dear Prof. Marsh, I received some time ago your very kind note of July 28th, and yesterday the magnificent volume. I have looked with renewed admiration at the plates, and will soon read the text. Your work on these old birds on the many fossil animals of N. America has afforded the best support to the theory of evolution, which has appeared within the last 20 years. The general appearance of the copy which you have sent me is © Bill J Unzen worthy of its contents, and I can say nothing stronger than this. With cordial thanks, believe me yours very sincerely, Charles Darwin.
© Russell C Hawley
Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
© Dan C Holland
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C re t a c eo u s Classifieds Free to subscribers but must be updated each issue Wanted: I am interested in any playvisions animal figures but especially the African Forest Buffalo, Chital (Axis Deer) and Dhole. I am also looking for Jeols Bushpig, Safari Vanishing Wild Gemsbok (adult and calf), and ELC Kob. I would be interested in almost any mammal figures, prehistoric and modern. Please email me at
[email protected], you can call at 801 597 8875 or write to Keith Brown, 3032 S 5990 W, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84128 For Sale: I am offering the complete U.S. set of 18 Battat dinosaurs, in mint condition with tags. Rex stands! Also, the complete US release of the Invicta (British MNH) set, the complete ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) set, complete Dinosaurs of China in boxes, and the complete early releases (first series through 2001) of the Carnegie Collection with tags, Wild Safari with tags, Safari Habitat Authentics Dinos I, II, and III in boxes, Safari Babies with tags, and miscellaneous older dino Toobs, boxes and retro bags. All mint condition, with tags as noted (some sets did not ship with tags). Also parting with PT issues #84-100. Contact Alan at
[email protected] or (360) 656-6857 For Sale : Complete set of Battat dinosaurs for sale, as a set. I also have one of the few JP full size raptor promotional pieces. This piece is unreal. I'm also downsizing a very large collection of various pieces amassed over 20 years of collecting. I have many unique and extremely hard to find dinosaurs and mammals that are no longer in production. Most of these are sets, all are in mint condition and never used other than for display. Call and or e-mail for more information on what's available.
[email protected] 513-737-6695 Wanted: Safari Ltd "dinosaur mountain" retail counter display. Replica collector looking for 1-3 of these large plastic racks to display ever-growing collection. Are you a museum, gift shop, or fellow collector with an extra one to get rid of? Contact Justin at
[email protected] For Sale or trade: I offer all the large J H Miller prehistoric animals/dinosaurs, caveman, cavewoman and cave. I have many SRG, both large and small, including the caveman, a complete set of Linde dinos, complete set of Battat (Boston Museum) dinos, Castagna dinos, Alva Bronto, Marx, Chialu, Starlux and more. Call Jim Van Dyke 616-669-3897
[email protected] NEW DINO SALES LIST AVAILABLE. JACK ARATA 2940 CONCORD AVE. BRENTWOOD, CA. 94513-4722 OR
[email protected] Attention Museums and collectors – Five original lamps designed by and made for Zdenek Burian's art studio for sale, contact me, Jiri Hochman for photograph, details and prices. Zdenek Burian post cards, posters, coffee cups and copyrights of Burian images for sale. Also looking for a producer/sponsor for: a Zdenek Burian exhibition in the USA/Canada etc ZB Great Monograph for sale in the USA/Canada etc production of copies of ZB original paintings for sale a completely new book (the best of) Zdenek Burian – Action Illustration - website: www.zdenekburian.com or contact
[email protected] WANTED: Max Salas 1/35 Entelodon and Andrewsarchus. Needed for my collection. Will buy or trade. Contact Ron at
[email protected]. WANTED: RAY HARRYHAUSEN & STOP-MOTION RELATED 'ZINES Colossa #1 (1993) / Hollywood Horror Classics #4 (1996) Cinemagram #1 (1964) / Cinefantastique #2 (Mimeo - Apr 1967) Mystification #6 (1965) / Animals Magazine (Aug 1969) - British Wonder #2 (Summer 1989) / Box Office Vol. 90 #16 (Feb 6 1967) Spectre #18 (Mar/Apr 1968) / Photon #1, 7, 13 (1963, 1965, 1967) Vampire's Crypt #8 (Dec 1963) / Amazing Screen Horrors #6 (1966) Just Imagine #4 (1977) - British / Cosmos Aventuras #9 (May 1964) Ray Harryhausen Journal (1973) / Animation Journal #4 (May 1965) Stop-Motion Monsters of Filmland #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9 Japanese (1990’s) King Kong: Unauthorized Jewish Fractals in Philopatry (1996) Contact: Scott McRae (
[email protected])
Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
Wanted: PT issues 1-22 & later back issues no longer available through PT, Marx dinos in metallic green, Pom Poms candy boxes w/ Aurora Prehistoric Scenes art on them, SRG metal Dinychthys fish, SRG paper for metal Mastodon figure, Chialu dinos (Italian composition), NF Neoform dinos, La Brea (Wm Otto) Mastodon, both bears, peccary & horse plus T. rex and Brontosaurus, Smithsonian metal prehistoric animals, Messmore & Damon 1933 Chicago World’s Fair metal figs., and Starlux Cephalaspis (jawless-fish) to complete my Starlux set! For Trade/Sale: vintage dinosaurs of most manufacturers. I’m always buying pre-1970s dino collectibles --Please contact Mike Fredericks 145 Bayline Cir, Folsom, Ca 95630-8077, (916) 985-7986
[email protected] WANTED: Prehistoric Times issues 79, 81, 83, and 84. Also looking for any books, magazines, and/or DVDs on whale evolution/extinct whales/dolphins, ancient marine reptiles, elephant evolution/extinct elephants, and shark evolution/extinct sharks. Will pay by money order only. Also looking for any information on fossils in Alabama, Mississippi, and the rest of the south eastern US. Please call 205-269-7054. FOR SALE: Hundreds of First Day Stamped Covers, thimbles, coins, library books for adults (like new), and hundreds of miniature dinosaur figurines including full set of LLADRO. Jon C Markin, 2688 York Street North, St Petersburg, FL 33710 Responses made to all serious inquiries. Wanted: any ice age animals for sale or trade that were recently available in PT, in a set of six. Interested in the whole set. Please be reasonable. Contact Gregory Ortiz
[email protected] or phone at 714.679.6285 FOR SALE: Invicta Tyrannosaurus, Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, woolly mammoth, Glyptodon, Dimetrodon, Blue Whale, painted Liopleurodon, and painted Plesiosaurus. Bullyland 1993 Parasaurolophus. Dinotales Series 1 Triceratops skeleton and Tyrannosaurus. Carnegie Collection Beipiaosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Spinosaurus, and Cryolophosaurus. Wild Safari Scutosaurus, Mosasaurus, Kentrosaurus, Allosaurus, Rhamphorhynchus, Coelacanth, and Field Museum Anatotitan. All new 2011 Safari LTD figures are available too. Wanted: Battat Ceratosaurus, Diplodocus, Tyrannosaurus, Maiasaura, and Parasaurolophus - Andrew
[email protected] Collector looking for Battat snowshoe & original style Tyrannosaurus, SRG Dunkleosteus & cave woman, Flintstones Hunting Party Tyrannosaurus in green, Invicta painted dinosaurs, Starlux Paleotherium, Andrewsarchus and Cave people Contact Pat at:
[email protected] For Sale: 3/4'” cloisonne lapel pin that states: REUNITE GONDWANALAND and depicts Pangea and Laurasia united in one huge continent. Only a limited number are available. $8 includes the pin and postage. Contact Lynne Dickman, (406) 728-5221,
[email protected] FOR SALE: Horizon 1/19 scale vinyl JP Brachiosaurus kit. Box in good condition, parts still in bag. $125 plus shipping. Kenner JP Triceratops with "dino damage", new in box $40 plus shipping. Horizon 1/30 vinyl Apatosaurus kit new in box $35 plus shipping. Please contact Perry:
[email protected] for information or photos. Wanted: Hobby Trading Post (Nu-Card) DINOSAURS cards (B&W, post-card size) #'s 7, 13, 15, 28. I will gladly purchase these but I also have many duplicate cards available for trade. I would prefer "nice" condition cards (e.g., VG+ to Mint) without major creasing or other significant defects. Please contact me (Mike Riley) at:
[email protected] or at 303-566-1267 (weekdays, 7:00 am to 4:00 pm, MDT). MODELERS: PT build up writer, Sean Kotz, now has a national hobby column on line at the Examiner. I am committed to bringing paleo models, sculptors and kits to the forefront on a regular basis, as well as all other forms of modeling from plastic kits to rocket ships. Go to www.examiner.com and search for "Model Building Examiner" or my name and bookmark or subscribe. You can also search out the Facebook Fan page WANTED: Max Salas 1/35 Entelodon, Wooly Rhino, Elasmotherium, Megalosaurus, and Mosasaur, also Mike Jones ceratopsian series. Contact Bill Heinrich--574-271-9821 or
[email protected]. Playset Magazine Plastic heaven, America's best info on vintage playsets by Marx and others from the Atomic Era and Beyond. Battleground, Zorro, news, classifieds to buy, color glossy. Complete website listings too! www.playsetmagazine.com, email
[email protected], or call (719) 634-7430 For Sale: Horizon 1/19 scale vinyl Jurassic Park Brachiosaur kit. Original box and parts still in poly bag. $125 plus ship-
ping. Dave Colton –
[email protected] WANTED: Invicta Muttaburrasaurus & PlayVision Wild Dogs set. E-mail:
[email protected] (Ronald). J H Miller repaired - your broken and incomplete vintage J H Miller plastic figures -expertly repaired. Ask for Nick Lamanec (484) 274-0315 Hard To FInd, Rare Dinosurs & Some Classic SF, Fantasy, & Horror on VHS - asking price for the entire collection is $250 in cash , Chris Clubb 113. N. Cedar ST. Apt#301 Glendale Ca, 91206
[email protected] (818) 243-6335 FOR SALE: Looking for awesome paleontology-themed Tshirts? Visit www.cafepress.com/dannysdinosaurs! Featuring clever dinosaurian designs on everything from shirts to coffee mugs to bumper stickers, www.cafepress.com/dannysdinosaurs is a great place for all your dinosaur apparel needs. TOP DOLLAR PAID for prehistoric animal postcards including diorama scenes, statues, fossils, museum displays, etc. I also would like to purchase prehistoric animal museum or excavation site brochures and posters. If you have vintage dinosaur or prehistoric animal books or photographs from the 1900's up to 1980 please let me know since I also collect these. I have lots of paper ephemera such as this for trade if that is preferable. Please contact Stephen Hubbell (253) 851-7036 or email me at
[email protected]. search4dinosaurs.com is always looking to add new artists. If you are looking to promote your work this is the perfect place to do so. Each image on the site is viewed by hundreds’s and sometimes thousands of visitors each week. Many artists receive commission work from publishers after being seen here.There is no charge, just e-mail 6 or more examples of your art work and I’ll create the gallery page. I only show full body examples of Mesozoic creatures, several in one scene is fine. Level of expertise must match that of the work already being shown on the site. Images should be at least 600 x 400 pixel jpg or gifs, larger is better. For more information
[email protected] PALEOSCENE - Supplying fossils and museum quality fossil replicas at very affordable prices. Our replicas are carefully made from molds of the original fossil specimens.Each cast is meticulously hand painted to give a natural and realistic appearance closely matching the original fossil. Our replicas include many unusual and famous specimens, including Archaeopteryx, Seymouria, pterosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles, mammals, birds, fish, invertebrates (including trilobites), and a variety of dinosaur and pre-dinosaur tracks (will help artists get those feet and footprints right!). "Please visit our website at http://paleo.cc/paleoscene.htm or call 281-290-6751 or write to Glen Kuban, PaleoScene, 11702 Littlefield Ct, Tomball, TX 77377, Email:
[email protected]. PALEODIRECT.COM Your direct source for the finest and rarest fossil specimens along with tools and weapons of primitive man. With several thousand pages of fossils and primitive man artifacts displayed online, PaleoDirect.com is truly one of the largest online paleontological suppliers across the globe. Categories include a BROAD DIVERSITY of both INVERTEBRATE and VERTEBRATE fossils. We also specialize in genuine TOOLS and WEAPONS of PRIMITIVE HUMANS from the Lower PALEOLITHIC through the NEOLITHIC Periods up to and including the Iron Age. PALEO DIRECT, Inc. is a full-time, professional supplier and a member of the American Association of Paleontological Suppliers.We acquire specimens direct from the source regions of the world through exclusive affiliations with the diggers and their management as well as conduct several of our own international collecting expeditions each year. Furthermore, many of our rare specimens are prepared in-house by our own conservation facilities and staff. This explains our consistently better quality fossils than is usually found in the marketplace. In addition to what is shown on the site, an even greater inventory of specimens are either yet to be listed or in various states of preparation. Please contact us if you have interest in an item that is not shown. New material from around the world is constantly being added. If you wish to be added to our email list for when new specimens are updated to the website, please email or call us and let us know. PALEO DIRECT, INC. P. O. Box 160305 Altamonte Springs, FL 32716-0305 (407) 774-1063 www.PaleoDirect.com
[email protected] Supplying museums, educational facilities and discriminating collectors around the world. Sculptor for hire: top quality & accuracy. Will sculpt all prehistoric, wildlife, military, or action figures/heads. Previous work seen/reviewed in PT (see classified ad in PT #27, also PT#59 & Dinotreker.com) Terms fair and flexible. Will also build and paint your kit! For Sale: Kaiyodo 1/35 Dinoland triceratops, 4” resin. Contact Jerry Finney 12419 E 212 St Lakewood, Ca 90715 (562) 809-3235
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Notes on
“Agathaumas –Monoclonius” By Allen A. Debus
described this species in 1889. This sketch, similarly lacking in detail yet more similar to Knight’s subsequent restoration was reproduced as Fig. 23 in H. F. Osborn’s Cope: Master Naturalist (1931). The Monoclonius head has a long, straight nasal horn, with a shorter horn shown laterally over an eye. The frill collar is smooth, not spiky – looking. (Cope’s pictures were probably dated circa or post-1890.) Old Agathaumus by Lawson Wood
A familiar Charles R. Knight restoration obtainable as a print from the American Museum’s photographic collection (negative #322527) bears the description “Agathaumas (Monoclonius).” This brief caption reflects a long standing state of confusion. Agathaumas’ restored, pictorial appearance is nearly as fanciful as Godzilla’s, yet the former is exalted as a “real” dinosaur owning an entry in Glut’s Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia (1997). Agathaumas sylvestris is a name assigned by Edward D. Cope on the basis of fossilized ceratopsian bone discovered in Wyoming (Lance formation). Let’s briefly consider how Agathaumas rose from the ashes of deep time only to slip into scientific backwater, along the way fulfilling an ideologically important role beyond its celebrated performance on the silver screen. Cope was elated with his guesstimated 30-foot long, 6- ton dinosaur, a “… species …no doubt equal in dimensions to the largest known terrestrial saurians or mammals.” Charles R. Knight, who in 1897 famously conferred with Cope on this genus, is responsible for boldly creating a beautiful painting of this animal. With only fossil scrap available from outcrops in southwestern Wyoming (16 vertebrae – tail, backbone, pelvis, ilia, a few rib bones & other scrap), the beast proved mysterious, despite the “wondrous” impression it created in Cope’s fertile mind, as conveyed to North America’s greatest paleoartist. Why did their restoration have to be so beautiful?! What a magnificent looking, “horn-a-plenty” face that Agathaumas sported but a head not based on a single shred of documented fossil evidence, nonetheless. The first essay best illuminating Agathaumas’ problematic peculiarities appeared in Glut’s The Dinosaur Scrapbook (1980, pp. 276-281). By the early 20th century, relatively few dinosaurs had vaulted into pop-culture as science fictional, horror monsters. However, despite its dubious scientific nature, Agathaumas became one or our very first “true” dino-monsters, perpetuating its popularity. For many paleophiles recognized the likeness of Knight’s dinosaur - nearly as fanciful as a unicorn - in a sculpture made by Marcel Delgado & animated by Willis O’Brien for 1925’s The Lost World. Arguably, if not for The Lost World and conflated pop-cultural morphing with Monoclonius - another one of Cope’s named dinosaurs, once popular Agathaumas would have rather quickly faded from the mainstream. In fact, its name would wane long before its appearance. Rightfully relegated to questionable status by professional paleontologists, Knight’s fanciful restoration generally was omitted from geology & paleotextbooks. Today however, for PT readers and many sci-fi enthusiasts, Agathaumas remains an unforgotten, if non-celebrated curiosity. Even before Knight’s fateful meetings with Cope - resulting in Knight’s small statue and the most famous painted Agathaumas restoration, a peculiar reconstruction of this genus appeared in a popular 1892 article by James Erwin Culver. The animal depicted in the article appears as a nondescript uintathere, although Culver clearly intended to describe a three-horned dinosaurian, not a mammal. Following restoration of Marsh’s Triceratops, with its imposing “threehorn” skull, Cope had reason to reconsider his earlier evaluations of material assigned to Agathaumas and Monoclonius. Glut (1980, p.277) reproduced Cope’s outline drawing of a very ‘triceratopsian-looking’ dinosaur drawn by Cope; the name “Agathaumas” is handwritten on the original sketch. Cope also drew the first outline restoration of Monoclonius “sphenoceras” (sic), replete with some postcranial body armor scutes. Cope had 46
Under Cope’s tutelage, the mental morphing process resulted in Knight’s small sculpture and painting of the Agathaumas. Knight’s painting was reproduced in an 1897 Century Magazine article by William H. Ballou, where he described two presumed species of Agathaumas. Ballou stated that “… one of the species Agathaumas sylvestris (Cope), is distinguished by its nose-horn pointing forward; another Agathaumas sphenocerus (Cope), by its nose-horn pointing straight upward.” Furthermore, Knight’s restoration of the Agathaumas sphenocerus (i.e. not sylvestris) “…is based on Professor O. C. Marsh’s prior reconstruction of Triceratops prorsus.” Cope’s Monoclonius sketch (and therefore Knight’s) restorations were fortified with dorsal armor, perhaps borrowing (however exaggerated) from J. Smit’s 1893 restoration of Triceratops prorsus (as published in editions of H. N. Hutchinson’s Extinct Monsters). By 1897, Cope also had reduced the size of his “elephantine” Agathaumas, from 30 feet to 12 -14 feet long. Previously, Cope assigned the name, Monoclonius (crassus) in 1876, and erected three more species in 1889, including “M. sphenocerus,” which indeed possessed a straight, tall nasal horn. Essentially then, a species name attributed to Agathaumas in Century Magazine was taken from the Monoclonius part of the “chimera,” while the generic name was assigned to the scrappy collection of fossil bones discovered in 1872. Cope may have intended Knight’s 1897 statue and painting to be a melding of Monoclonius species. By the 1910s, most paleontology texts and popular works had dispensed with references to Agathaumas, opting instead to feature Triceratops as the exemplary horned dinosaur, which by then was far better known thanks to O. C. Marsh and John Bell Hatcher. Furthermore, during the 1910s, Barnum Brown exhumed additional skeletal material belonging to another horned Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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dinosaur, Monoclonius, a skeletal reconstruction of which was illustrated expertly by Erwin S. Christman in 1916. As Glut noted in 1980, while Hatcher and Richard Swann Lull (1907) considered Agathaumas to be “transitional” between Monoclonius and Triceratops, others believed Monoclonius was congeneric with headless Agathaumas.
“fleshy” home movie puppet (see PT # 78, p.7), and a 1990s toy created by Jary Lesser based on Delgado’s 1925 handiwork. And then there’s a miniature resin rendition of the Agathaumas (Monoclonius) sculpted in 2002 by yours truly, a limited edition still available for purchase. (Contact me at
[email protected] for details.)
In 1900, one of the earliest copycat restorations of Knight’s Agathaumas appeared in an article by Rev. H. N. Hutchinson. The “clever illustration” by Lawson Wood (dated 1900), was founded upon Knight’s “life-like plaster cast” as depicted in Nature, 8/25/1898. Except Hutchinson’s description in the caption refers the animal restored by Wood to Triceratops. Thus began a trend where chosen aspects and features of the “appearance” of Knight’s 3-horned Agathaumas became “drafted” or incorporated into alternative pictorial usage, yet defined in captions as “belonging” to other horned dinosaurs, usually Monoclonius or Triceratops. In a collectible series of colorful cards, “Tiere der Urwelt,” issued in the early 1900s (e.g. circa 1902 to 1906), issued by the Kakao Company of Hamburg-Wandsbek, artist F. Long copied Knight’s Agathaumas, although a caption refers to the beast as “Triceratops prorsus.” Then a decade later, paleoartist Joseph Pallenberg outfitted his life-sized, fully 3-horned Triceratops restorations for Germany’s Hagenbeck Tiergarten with spiny looking, Agathaumas-like frills and considerable scutey-looking, body armor.
Throughout the mid 20th century, thanks to impressive life restorations such as by Zdenek Burian and Richard Swann Lull (a late 1920s “skeletal half-restoration” mount for Yale’s Peabody Museum), Lois Darling and a handful of others founded on Christman’s on-paper skeletal reconstruction, Monoclonius became a more celebrated denizen of the Cretaceous world than the “real” Agathaumas. Meanwhile, in behind-the-scenes fashion, paleontologists were demonstrating that a similar yet distinct genus, Centrosaurus, was understood to be a far more common contemporary than Monoclonius. Peter Dodson expertly outlined this transitional episode in his excellent, The Horned Dinosaurs: A Natural History (1996).
But whenever necessary, Knight’s 1897 imaginary Agathaumas could also magically morph into Monoclonius, as we see in a caption written within Barnum Brown’s May, 1919 National Geographic article, “Hunting Big Game of Other Days.” Even a decade after the release of First National’s The Lost World (1925), Knight’s Agathaumas enjoyed further reproduction in the guise of “Monoclonius,” as drawn in 1935 by V. T. Hamlin for Dinny’s Family Album. Ray Harryhausen vivified an Agathaumas – like creature for his 1940 stop-motion film, Evolution. Besides examples shown in Glut’s 1980 essay, other “Agathaumas (Monoclonius)” appearances include a 1936 chocolate trading card (see PT #67, p.26), in photos of stop-motion “puppets” intended for an aborted film - circa 1939’s The Lost Atlantis, as a
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The name “Agathaumas” (incorrectly spelled “Egothamus” in context of the 1925 film) was generally ignored during the latter 20th century. Paleontologists now regard influential Agathaumas as probably Triceratops or Torosaurus instead. The former name is considered a nomen dubium due to a lack of suitably descriptive characters assignable to its fossils. However, once gazing upon Agathaumas’ magnificently spiky face, many dino-aficionados will be forever smitten, favoring its distinctively ‘Knightian’ allure & charisma. Over time, Agathaumas’ popularity and scientific significance waned. However, as related in 1982 and 1994 by Brent H. Breithaupt, Agathaumas’ fossils did indeed become instrumental in aiding Cope’s eventual confirmed determination that the associated sediments (named “Lance” in 1950) were of Late Cretaceous rather than Eocene age (i.e. replacing the term, “Laramie” for these rocks). An unheralded legacy.
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Continuing from Page 19 Like many hadrosaurs (and all lambeosaurids) Corythosaurus had a bony crest on top of their skull containing elongated nasal passages likely used for calls. Originally it was believed these dinosaurs were aquatic and their large, hollow crests were either snorkels or air reserves akin to a scuba tank. This idea was supported by the discovery that Corythosaurus had webbed feet.
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The only animal today that comes even close to the lifestyle of these animals are the similarly sized elephants, who also live in herds. These large animals are often spread over a wide area and are very noisy, especially when traveling, thus they have developed a very specialized way of communicating with each other. For elephants, they use harmonics called infrasound, which they can detect through their trunks and feet. Hadrosaurs, like Corythosaurus, seem to have developed their own ability to communicate with each other in the form of loud, very distinct calls from the elongated nasal passages contained in these crests. So, not a snorkel then, and those web feet have since proven to be the large pads these animals walked on. There is also at least one Corythosaurus that’s been found with its stapes, a bone in tetrapods that’s used for hearing and in fish that makes up part of their jaw. Located within a large eardrum, this bone suggests Corythosaurus had highly developed hearing. The numerous corythosaurs found over the years have provided a wealth of information. Their mummified skin contains both large and small polygonal scales. Stomach contents have also revealed they ate conifers, while studies of their sclerotic rings suggest these dinosaurs lived what is being classified as ‘cathemeral’. Once you’d talk about an animal being nocturnal or diurnal, but there’s now a third category. Cathermal animals are equally active at night as they are in the day as they feed, move, mate, hunt or escape predation for short intervals throughout the entire day and rest in between. So, Corythosaurus has provided more information about dinosaurs than many other species and are even (very loosely) associated with the sinking of the Titanic. They really do deserve more of our attention than they have received so far.
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Continuing from Pg 13 when it comes to their using them in books. Knight had made a deal with the American Museum that he and his descendants retained the right to use them that way. By the way, I worked for twelve years at the AMNH as a Senior Editor on Natural History magazine, so that’s where many of the pictures came from. Then there were a few special pictures that have very interesting histories.
© Chas R Knight courtesy Sylvia Czerkas
PT: What are some of those? RM: One of them is the Tyrannosaurus that is standing alone with a splash of sunlight on his head. I got that from Sylvia Czerkas, who has that dinosaur museum in Blanding, Utah. That was in the Knight book “Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Cavemen,” which Sylvia did with Don Glut some years ago. I saw that picture in there and I flipped. Because I have a section in my book about the making of a restoration, and I found a handwritten draft by Charles Knight describing how he painted a Tyrannosaurus. The steps involved making a miniature mockup of the skeleton, using clay to flesh it out, then making a plaster cast of the clay sculpture. Then he would take the model outdoors in the sunlight to see how the shadows would fall at different times of day. He said that was a very simple technique for achieving a very effective illusion of realism-– because the shadows would fall the same way with a miniature as with the full-sized animal. So Sylvia’s picture completes a series of pictures that I already had, starting with the skeleton. The middle step is shown by a photo of the bronze statue of that tyrannosaur, which is owned by Bill Stout, the well-known paleoartist who told me he was very strongly influenced by Charles Knight. Finally, I located Sylvia, and she kindly sent me the picture. When I asked her where the original is, she said nobody knows. It was hanging on a museum wall when somebody stole it years ago. We don’t know where it is. If any of your readers knows where that painting is, maybe we can get it back. Meanwhile, that photo of Sylvia’s is all that remains of it, and I was very glad to get it for the book. That layout would have been dead without it. Then there’s the bronze winged lion, which is perched on the end of an umbrella stand. People write to Rhoda and me all the time seeking authentication of so-called Knights. There are many phonies that turn up with his name signed to them – things that don’t resemble either his signature, or his style, or his subject matter, but this one was signed in the bronze and it was certainly authentic. She and her friend had found it in a flea market in Connecticut for forty dollars. One picture that was little known and previously unpublished is a mural of a family of saber-tooth cats with mastodons near a water hole in Pleistocene Florida. Knight painted it on a government contract during the Depression for a little post office in the village of Sebring, Florida. That post office was later converted into a police station, so drunks that were hauled in late at night found themselves staring at a gaping, growling sabertooth behind the sergeant’s desk as they were booked. Later, the little building was demolished, but some astute local citizens rescued the mural just in the nick of time; it is now on permanent display in the Sebring village library – and in my book. Another unusual image was the painting of the French prehistorian-priest Abbé Henri Breuil. He had been the first to document the Paleolithic art in the caves of France and Spain. Anthropologist Ian Tattersall got a call from a prehistorian in France who said, “There’s a picture on my wall of the Abbé Breuil, and it’s signed by Charles R. Knight. Do you know anything about it? Did Knight actually meet the Abbé and paint his portrait from life? Or was it from a photograph? Did he paint any other prehistorians?” So Ian passed that along to me.
his family to visit the French caves. He had a wonderful time with the Abbé, who was a brilliant, dynamic prehistorian, dedicated to studying and preserving these Paleolithic animal paintings. In gratitude, Knight did a painting of him, and wrote a delightful account of his visit there, and even of the portrait painting session with the Abbé, whom he greatly liked and admired. The painting was at the Institute of Human Paleontology in Paris, and I started to nag the French prehistorian to get a photograph taken of the painting, so I could have it for the book. They got a professional photographer to do it, which I paid for. It sets off my section on the cave tour very nicely, and gives me the opportunity to print Knight’s descriptions of the Abbé and of the caves. And I asked the French prehistorian, “How did that picture happen to be hanging in your office?” He replied, “I think it’s been on the wall of my office for a hundred years.” I said, “Who had that office before you?” And he said, “Well, the Abbé Breuil! He still had the office when he died in 1961.” I thought that was pretty good. Another interesting acquisition was the Knight mural of the Blackfoot Indian creation myth, which I call the “Starry Knight.” It shows the moon goddess being pursued by the sun god against a cosmic backdrop of Indian heroes in the constellations, and also depicts the Old Man and the EarthDiver myth about the creation of the Earth. It’s a wonderful mural that used to be near the entrance of the Hayden Planetarium, which adjoined the American Museum of Natural History. The Planetarium was torn down and rebuilt a few years ago, and no one seemed to know what happened to that wonderful mural. The rumor at the Museum was that it was walled up or destroyed, and there was no good color photo of it. So I took an old black and white photo from a museum pamphlet, and asked the great paleoartist Viktor Deak to color and restore it, and that’s the picture that appears in the book--a brilliant digital restoration of a “lost” mural. But I found out just before the book went to press that the original painting does indeed still exist. It was taken off the wall, rolled up and crated, and is in deep storage in the museum’s Brooklyn warehouse, where it might remain for another hundred years – safe but lost, like the Ark of the Covenant in the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. PT: Thanks for telling how you got some of those rare images exclusively for Prehistoric Times and best of luck with your fine book. RM: My pleasure, Michael.
I told our French colleague that the picture was painted in 1927, when anthropologist Henry Field, nephew of Marshall Field, invited Knight and Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
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MESOZOIC MEDIA Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner with a preface by Rhoda Knight Kalt Hardcover: 180 pages Publisher: Harry N. Abrams ISBN-10: 0810984792 ISBN-13: 9780810984790 $40.00 American wildlife artist Charles R. Knight (1874–1953) spent a lifetime creating some of the first paintings and sculptures of dinosaurs, mammoths, and cavemen that were both spectacularly beautiful and scientifically accurate for the time. For generations, his work has inspired scientists, artists, and filmmakers all over the world. All prehistoric artwork today has Knight to thank for being the pioneering trailblazer into the world of paleoart. This richly illustrated celebration of Knight’s artwork gathers together famous and never-before-seen paintings, sculptures, sketches, and murals. In addition to a new biographical essay, it also features excerpts from Knight’s extensive writings about extinct and modern animals. It provides a new look at Knight’s lifelong quest to depict the range of animal species, his struggles with failing eyesight, his desire for artistic independence, and his deep sense of kinship with Ice Age cave artists. This is an amazing coffee table book with numerous illustrations on every page and information you will find no where else. You can read more about Knight in my interview with the author in this issue but that only scratches the surface of what’s in this very welcome new book. No prehistoric animal lover or art lover should be without it. Planet Dinosaur BBC Hardcover: 288 pages, Publisher: BBC Books ISBN-10: 1849900930 ISBN-13: 9781849900935 A decade ago, "Walking with Dinosaurs" brought prehistoric animals to life with groundbreaking CGI and new science. Since then we have entered into a golden age of dinosaur discoveries and in this explosive new book to accompany the BBC series, we discover more dinosaurs than we've ever known before. The opening up of new areas of the world such as China and Africa have led to a huge increase in our knowledge. With incredible CGI artwork and fascinating scientific discoveries, "Planet Dinosaur" brings to life a terrifying prehistoric world of giants, killers, feathered beasts and sea monsters in extraordinary detail. This is a colorful companion book to the BBC series. Next issue I will review the Blu-Ray of this BBC documentary here. Riddle of the Feathered Dragons: Hidden Birds of China By Alan Feduccia Hardcover: 368 pages Yale University Press ISBN-10: 0300164351ISBN-13: 978-0300164350 $55.00 Examining and interpreting recent spectacular fossil discoveries in China, paleontologists have arrived at a prevailing view: there is now incontrovertible evidence that birds represent the last living dinosaur. But is this conclusion beyond dispute? In this book, evolutionary biologist Alan Feduccia provides a comprehensive discussion of the avian and associated evidence found in China, then exposes the massive, unfounded speculation that has accompanied these discoveries and been published in the pages of prestigious scientific journals. The controversial author says that advocates of the current orthodoxy on bird origins have ignored contrary data, misinterpreted fossils, and used faulty reasoning. Drawing on a lifetime of Prehistoric Times No. 101 Spring 2012
study, he offers his own current understanding of the origin of birds and avian flight. University of North Carolina’s Alan Feduccia has long disagreed with the ''birds from dinosaurs'' theories. He says that although birds and dinosaurs may have come from a common ancestor and share some common features, Feduccia and his book, packed with research results, illustrations, and data, cast doubts upon the majority opinion. The idea of feathered dinosaurs was once controversial, now it seems Feduccia’s doubts are controversial. The Complete World of Human Evolution (Second Edition) Paperback by Chris Stringer and Peter Andrews $26.95 240 pages Thames & Hudson ISBN-10: 0500288984 ISBN-13: 978-0500288986 Human domination of the earth is now so complete that it is easy to forget how recently our role in the history of the planet began. The earliest apes evolved around twenty million years ago, yet Homo sapiens has existed for a mere 160,000 years. In the intervening period, dozens of species of early ape and human have lived and died out, leaving behind the fossilized remains that have helped to make the detailed picture of our evolution. Since this book was first published in 2005 there have been exciting new developments in the story of ape and human evolution, and the authors take account of them in this revised edition. The big gap in the fossil record in Africa is beginning to be filled with the discovery of several new species of apes in Kenya and Ethiopia that date from ten to nine million years ago. There are new discoveries of Australopithecus, updates on the dating of hominid sites, results of new DNA analysis, and much more.180 full-color and 252 black-and-white illustrations. You can’t ask for much more than a book that literally covers every aspect of its subject matter and this book does it so beautifully. Kitty & Dino by Sara Richard (Illustrator) Hardcover: 48 pages Publisher: Yen Press ISBN-10: 0316133515 ISBN-13: 978-0316133517 $16.99 When a little boy brings home a dinosaur egg, the cat of the house isn't too keen on the tiny creature that pops out. But after a few weeks of showing the new baby the ropes, a bond forms between kitty and dino that transcends species. Featuring stunning and fluid line work from artist Sara Richard (seen often in Prehistoric Times magazine), Kitty & Dino will win the hearts of children and is a beautiful, original work of art. Collecting for Beginners by Jeff FiglerPaperback: 178 pages Publisher: CreateSpace ISBN-10: 1461077435 ISBN-13: 978-1461077435 From pricey porcelain figurines to autographed baseballs, everything, it seems, is collected by at least someone. And no one knows the rapidly growing field of collectibles better than renowned expert Jeff Figler. You may have seen him on PBS’s Nightly Business Report or heard him on Sirius Radio. In Collecting for Beginners, Figler introduces fledgling collectors to the ins and outs of collecting from A to Z. Collecting for Beginners covers a huge array of topics, including how to care for collectibles, how to collect for the future, and how collectors should conduct themselves at auctions, both on-site and online. There is no other book that serves as a primer for aspiring collectors, whose numbers continue to grow despite the economic slowdown. Okay, this isn’t a “dinosaur book” but many PT readers are collectors of dinosaur items and other items. I am guilty as charged and have loved being a collector of many things since I was a child. This is a fabulous book to bring you into the hobby intelligently. 53
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